BJ 1661 




LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 



DANGER SIGNALS. 



THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH, 

FROM THE BUSINESS MAN'S STANDPOINT. 



{Containing Advice to the Young on the Evils of the Day 
from Many Merchants of Boston.) 



As 



BY REV. F. E. CLARK, 

Pastor of the Phillips Church, Boston. Author of " The 
Children and the Church "; " Our Business Boys," etc. 




BOSTON : 

LEE & SHEFARD, PUBLISHERS. 

NEW YORK : 

CHARLES T. DILLINGHAM. 

1885 



<\ IX 



Copyrighted, 1885, by F. E. Clark. 



B. Thurston & Co., 
Printers and Stereotypers, 

PORTLAND, ME. 



TO THE YOUNG PEOPLE OF PHILLIPS CHURCH 

AND CONGREGATION, 

WHO HAVE EVER STAYED UP THEIR PASTOR'S HANDS. 



PREFACE. 



The following chapters were delivered as Sunday 
evening addresses in one of the churches of Boston, 
to an audience embracing hundreds of young people, 
among whom was a large proportion of young men. 

They are now presented to a larger audience with 
the same hope that first led to their preparation, 
namely, that some of those who are about leaving 
the home port on life's voyage may be warned by the 
"Danger Signals" flying in these pages, of storm 
centers which would otherwise wreck manhood and 
womanhood. 

The direct form of address, originally used, is con- 
tinued in these pages, and the personal pronouns have 
not been blotted, in order that the young people who 
read these chapters may know, as well as those who 
were spoken to, that they are individually addressed. 

f. e. c. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

OTKODUCTOEY. 9 

The Red Flag with a Black Center. What is 
the Use of it. The Object of this Book. The 
Barrier between the Clergymen and the Young 
Men. An Attempt to Overcome it. Letter to 
the Business Men. Their Response. "For the 
Sake of the Boys." The Pool-Room and the 
Prayer-Room. An Appeal to S elf-Interest. 

CHAPTER II. 

KING ALCOHOL. 16 

Intemperance a Withering Simoon. What the 
Business Men Say. The Story of a Moral 
Wreck. The Revenues of King Alcohol. The 
Number of his Retainers. His Absolute Power 
over his Subjects. One Stronger than King 
Alcohol. 

CHAPTER III. 

THE HENCHMEN OF KING ALCOHOL. 33 

King Alcohol, too Wise to Come for his Victims 
Himself, Sends his Better Looking Henchmen. 
Personal Experience of Successful Business 



6 CONTENTS. 

Men. Bad Companions. Few Boys Enter the 
Bum Shops for the First Time Alone. The Bos- 
ton Boys' Solemn Compact. Weak Will — the 
Traitor. Idleness. Why Some of Boston's Busi- 
ness Men are Rich. Busyness that is not 
Business. Hope for All. 

CHAPTER IV. 

DIRT IN INK. 55 

Why Many Business Men Place Bad Literature 
First among the Enemies of Youth. The Tree 
with the Rotten Heart. The Insidiousness of 
this Evil. The Gypsy Boy's Vengeance. Indict- 
ment of the Bad Book. It Gives a Strained, 
Unnatural View of Life. It Glorifies Evil. 
It Leaves no Room for the Good. The Jelly- 
Bag Reader. The Corrupt Literature of 
France. Tree-Fro g Minds. What the Law can 
Do. 

CHAPTER V. 

TRASHININK. 78 

Infant Indian Exterminators. Further Wise 
Words from the Business Men. Juvenile Burg- 
laries and Flash Papers. One Hundred Thou- 
sand People of Boston Keep Company with 
Train Wreckers and Highwaymen. The Cause 
of this Trash in Ink, Cheap Imitation of Bur- 
dette and mark twain. a waste of tlme. a 



CONTENTS. 7 

Sum in Arithmetic. The Scrappy Mind of the 
Mere Newspaper Reader. The Young High- 
waymen near Boston. The Story of the Judge's 
Son. 

CHAPTER VI. 

THE LOW THEATER. 103 

The General "Theater Question" not Discussed. 
Warnings from the Business Men. The Mur- 
derer's Starting-Point. The Peril to Purity 
of Character. The Low Theater Always Ca- 
ters to Lust. Three Theater Bills. The Rum 
Shop Next Door. Jesse James Plays, and their 
"Strong Situations." The Low Theater At- 
tempts to Make Black Appear White, and 
Confuses Moral Distinctions. The True Pic- 
ture of Vice. 

CHAPTER VII. 

THE GAMBLING DEN. 126 

The Little Horses of Interlaken. Base-Ball 
Pool-Rooms. From the Prize Candy Bag to the 
Roulette Table. The Beans in a Bottle. The 
Soap Lottery. What the Boston Merchants 
Have to Say. The Butcher Bird of the Commu- 
nity. How a Million Dollars a Year Change 
Hands. Revelations of an Old Gambler. The 
Gambler's Prevailing Traits. Cupidity and 
Laziness. Midas' Ears. Good Things always 
Cost. The Devil's Private Way. 



8 CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER VIII. 

THE LEPER OF IMPURITY. 148 

The Dreaded Leper of Ancient Times. The more 
Loathsome Leper of Modern Times. What the 
Merchants Think of Him. Insanity or Suicide, 
The Three Doors by which teiis Leper Enters 
the Heart. Imagination-Door. Dr. Holland's 
Words of Wisdom. Eye-Door and Ear-Door. A 
Word to Young Women. Keep Safe the Jewel. 
Balls and Skating Rinks. A Dancing-Master's 
Opinion. Out-Door Sports. The Unspeakable 
Turk. The Leper's End. 

CHAPTER IX. 

SAPPERS AND MINERS OF CHARACTER: 

FRIVOLITY, SELFISHNESS, DISHONESTY. 172 

At Petersburg in 1864. The Enemies that Work 
Underground and in the Dark. Frivolity. The 
Wrong Names it Assumes. The Laughter of 
Fools. Portrait of the Frivolous Young Man 
and Woman. A Business Man's View. Selfish- 
ness. Cultivate the Generous Nature. The 
Moth Miller of Character. Thomas Canfield. 
Dishonesty. More Warnings from the Mer- 
chants. Honest George Washington and Honest 
Abraham Lincoln. A Last Whisper in the Ears 
of the Boys and Girls. 



CHAPTER I. 

INTRODUCTORY. 

The Red Flag with a Black Center. What is the 
Use of it? The Object of this Book. The Barri- 
er BETWEEN THE CLERGYMEN AND THE YOUNG MEN. 

An Attempt to Overcome it. Letter to the Busi- 
ness Men. Their Response. ' ' For the Sake of 
the Boys." The Pool-Room and the Prayer-Room. 
An Appeal to Self-Interest. 

Sometimes in stormy weather I look off toward 
our Signal Station, and there see a red flag with 
a black center fluttering in the breeze and I know 
that a beneficent government has ordered that 
flag to be flung out as a danger signal to warn the 
sailor of an approaching storm. "What is the 
use of doing anything of that sort?" the objector 
might say. "That red flag won't save the sailor's 
life. Provide a safe harbor and a breakwater to 
keep off the force of the sea, and a lighthouse to 
mark the rocks, and a good dock for the vessel, 
and never mind about that red rag fluttering 
1* 9 



10 DANGER SIGNALS. 

from the Signal Station." " No," saj^s the govern- 
ment; "we will dredge out the harbor and pro- 
vide the breakwater and lighthouse and dock, 
and we will also run up the red flag to tell the 
mariner of his need of refuge." The chief office 
of every church and minister of the gospel is to 
present the constructive, building truths, to lift 
up the Cross and the great Sufferer upon it, as 
the only Redemption of a lost race, to tell of the 
safe haven, and to point out the good roadstead 
where tempest-tost vessels on life's ocean may 
ride out the storm, but it is also the duty of every 
church and preacher of the gospel to warn the 
mariner of approaching gales. The red flag saves 
life as well as the breakwater and the lighthouse. 

Raging storms and fierce are abroad. Before 
we know it our children may be involved and 
eternally wrecked. For their sakes I have felt it 
my duty to run up these Danger Signals. 

When this conclusion was reached the next 
question to decide was how may this best be 
done. 

Young men are apt to feel that a clergyman is 
more or less of a recluse, who shuts himself up 



THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH. 11 

with his books, and knows little of the temptations 
and struggles of real life. A false idea I believe, 
for the most part, for the wind howls and the 
storms beat against the study window as well as 
against the counting-house window; and if any 
one has a chance to know something of every phase 
of life and human nature it is the pastor of a mod- 
ern parish. However, I recognize that feeling, 
and know that many half unconsciously say to 
themselves whenever a preacher presents a truth, 
or utters a warning, " Oh yes, that 's a minister's 
view, that 's his business. He is expected to say 
such things." 

Realizing this barrier which some of you would 
half unconsciously set up, I have requested a large 
number of the business men of Boston to assist 
me in running up these danger signals, and ac- 
cordingly sent out the following circular letter : 

" Dear Sir. For the sake of the boys and young 
men will you help me point out to them some of the 
dangers which lie in their pathway ? I propose to give 
a short series of addresses upon the "Enemies of 
Youth" in which I wish to set before them not only a 
minister's views, but the opinions of practical and sue- 



12 DANGER SIGNALS. 

cessful business men such as most of them aspire to he. 
Such opinions will have the greatest weight with them. 

"So will you please tell them, through me, what, in 
your view, are their greatest enemies, e.g. rum, bad 
literature, gambling devices, low theaters ; these, or any 
other evils of like nature. 

U I would be very glad of your reasons for these views, 
and of any incidents or illustrations which have come 
under your notice, which serve to corroborate them ; but 
if in asking for this I am trespassing too much upon jouy 
time, may I ask you to indicate in a word or two the evils 
which appear to you most dangerous. and seductive. 
Yours in behalf of the boys, — " 

Most of these men to whom I wrote thought it 
worth their while to answer my letter. More 
than that, many took great pains in answering it, 
sending me frequently ten or a dozen or fifteen 
pages of good, advice. 

Many of these men are well known, and have 
been well known for years in commercial circles 
of Boston. Some of them count their wealth by- 
millions, and all of them have obtained what they 
have, be it much or little, by honest, straight- 
forward, manly dealing. Their success has been 
true success, not the glittering success of prosper- 



THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH. 18 

ous roguery, which is worse, than failure. . They 
are men for whom you work, young men ; men 
who watch some of you from day to day behind 
the counter, men who know thoroughly your 
temptations and difficulties, men who have been 
where you are now, climbing up the ladder, men 
whose places you aspire to fill one of these days. 

I have been particularly pleased with the gener- 
ous response I have received from these busy men, 
because it shows the intense interest that these 
merchants of Boston take in your welfare. Many 
of them speak hearty words of approval of this 
attempt which I am making to hoist these danger 
signals, and thank me for the opportunity I give 
them of aiding you by a word of advice. 

These letters show me, too, that the shrewd bus- 
iness men of Boston have their eyes upon you. 
They take far more notice of the young men than 
the young men are apt to think. They know a 
church from a saloon and they know when you 
frequent the one and avoid the other. A pool- 
room and a prayer-room do not particularly 
resemble one another, and you cannot hoodwink 
these men very long as to the place of your pref- 



14 DANGER SIGNALS. 

erence. You may think that in a large city you 
are lost in the crowd, and that nobody knows or 
cares what you do with your time or your money, 
but let me tell you that is a great mistake. Said 
a very prominent and wealthy man of business to 
me: "A young man's calibre and habits are soon 
known in a business community. His employers 
are reading him while he thinks they are reading 
the morning paper; and he very soon takes his 
own place as reliable, honest, and worthy of pro- 
motion, or the reverse." 

Says another merchant prominent and honored 
in many circles of Boston: "An employer can 
quickly tell whether his clerks find their happi- 
ness in late hours and dissipation, or in manly and 
rational and healthy and Christ-like exercise of 
mind and bodj^." 

Says another merchant of Boston whose name 
is as widely known as any between the covers of 
the Boston Directory : " The men who seek clerks 
or employees for any work seek those who avoid 
dissipation of any description and now as never 
before." 

This same idea I find in many letters. So, my 



THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH. 15 

young friend, if I cannot appeal as yet to a noble 
Christian principle within you, if I cannot argue 
with you on the highest plain of morality, let me 
appeal to this lower motive of self-interest while I 
ask you to give heed to these " Danger Signals." 



CHAPTER II. 

KING ALCOHOL. 

Intemperance a Withering Simoon. What the Busi- 
ness Men Say. The Story of a Moral Wreck. 
The Kevenues of King Alcohol. The Number of 
his Ketainers. His Absolute Power over his Sub- 
jects. One Stronger than King Alcohol. 

First on the black center of the blood-red flag 
which I would hoist before you I read the word 
"Intemperance." I raise this signal, not because 
this evil comes first, necessarily, in order of time, 
not because it is always the most dangerous, for 
it is too hideous to be seductive to many of you, 
but because, like a hot-breathed, withering simoon, 
this storm wind is always blowing, blasting 
everything strong and fair that comes within 
its influence. There are twenty-nine hundred 
saloons in the city of Boston, I understand, and 
a thousand more unlicensed, and every one of 
them is a horrible storm center in which the Evil 
One takes the place of fabled Eolus of old, and 
16 



THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH. 17 

seeks to wreck every fair bark upon the ocean of 
life. When we see at the signal office a white 
flag with a black center raised over a red flag 
with a black center we know that it means an off 
shore cautionary signal; that is, that while the 
storm has not passed, the prevailing winds are 
blowing off shore, and hence not so dangerous. 
But in the Simoon of Intemperance the winds 
never blow off shore. They are always driving 
their hapless victim upon the rocks of destruction 
and upon the wreck-lined shore of eternal misery. 

Most of the business men to whom I applied, 
have placed this evil at the head of their list, 
declaring it the gigantic curse of curses. One of 
them speaks to you in this way : " The good 
fellowship of friends is pleasant, the politeness, 
freedom, desire not to be considered green, are all 
natural, but no business man wants a clerk in his 
employ, who is a visitor at bar rooms or has asso- 
ciates who are frequenters of the same." 

Says another : " Intemperance being the leader, 
none of the other vices can be successfully assail- 
ed unless this is first controlled. The man who 
bows to this leadership, though he may be called 



18 DANGER SIGNALS. 

a man, has not in my judgment the moral attri- 
butes in exercise which give the quality of man- 
hood, having neither instinct nor reason." 

Says still another: "I am decidedly of the 
opinion that intemperance is by far the greatest 
enemy that boys have to contend with. At vari- 
ous times I have had six apprentices, and nearly 
all of them have turned out badly and this in 
spite of my best endeavors to have it otherwise. 
It would be doing the boys a great service if you 
can in any way make them see what the result 
will be of such a course. The difficulty is to 
make them believe there is any danger in their 
case." 

Says yet another: -"As I look back over the list 
of my friends and acquaintances of the past thirty 
years I am pained to recall the number of those 
who have died or been badly injured by this curse 
of mankind. 

"The approaches of the evil are so winsome 
that the young cannot be too constantly on their 
guard. Some one has well said that A-le, B-eer, 
C-ider are the beginning of the drunkard's alpha- 
bet. It was Christian reasoning which led a gen- 



THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH. 19 

tleman daily dining with a score of business 
friends, when asked by one of the number why he 
was the only one of the party who never took 
even a glass of lager beer, to reply, that he was 
often tempted to do so as the flavor was appetiz- 
ing to him, and an occasional glass might do him 
no harm, but that he realized somewhat the evil of 
intemperance and so was willing to deny himself 
what might be a harmless indulgence that he 
might help by his example others who were strug- 
gling to overcome the tendency toward strong 
and ruinous drink." 

I wish I could give you the many sad and 
touching incidents which have come to me from 
these men of affairs who wish to save you from 
the misery which they have witnessed. 

Says one whom many young men in Boston 
have occasion to revere and love : " I know a 
young man who formed the habit of using the 
social glass while in college, which habit he has 
never been able to fully overcome, and though he 
has fine talents, has many friends, and has held 
important public office, is occasionally overcome 
for a few days at a time, to his own sorrow and 



20 DANGER SIGNALS. 

shame, to the grief and mortification of his friends, 
and to loss of that public confidence which might 
otherwise entitle him to high position in public 
life." 

A gentleman who is a leading partner in one of 
the largest firms of Boston sends you this warn- 
ing in guise of an "o'er true tale." U I know 
well a family, called by my wife and myself the 
model family — so gentle and lovely in disposition 
and so obedient to parents and respectful to 
everybody. The eldest son expressed a hope 
in Christ during Mr. Moody's visit to this city 
some years since and united with the church of 
which his father and mother were members. He 
had never been out into the world ; he was sent 
to a private school in Connecticut, and, at the 
end of the term, went with his teacher and mem- 
bers of his class to Europe. How or when the 
appetite for spirituous liquors got hold of him 
his father could never learn. Suffice it to say 
that for years his parents and friends have done 
everything to break its hold, but, well-meaning 
as he is, the temptation is too strong for his will 
and he has almost broken his parents' hearts." 



THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH . 21 

Let me give you one more incident from these 
stories of the drink curse which have about them 
a monotony so sad and sequels so appalling. 

This, too, comes from an honored Boston mer- 
chant, who, for a number of years was mayor of a 
neighboring city. 

"Some years ago," he says, "a man came to me 
to purchase a house. He had a family, — a wife, 
son, daughter and father. He bought a place 
worth $12,000. At that time he was in a very 
prosperous business and had quite a monopoly of 
it for this part of the country. He claimed to be 
and I think he was worth $50,000. He seemed 
to be correct in all his habits ; his family was an 
interesting one. He kept his own.horse and car- 
riage, kept a hunting dog, was something of a 
sportsman, moved in good society and was gener- 
ally called a good fellow." And then comes the 
story of the gradual descent, the old, old story, 
business declining, house sold, the old father goes 
out to do chores for a living, the family move 
down through all the grades of respectability un- 
til "at last," says this gentleman, "he came to 



22 DANGER SIGNALS. 

me one day to beg, and said that he, wife, and 
daughter were living in a garret, sleeping on the 
floor, getting a little food when they could, and he 
and his son getting drunk whenever they could 
beg money enough to get rum. Later his son 
was sent to Deer Island for drunkenness, and this 
man applied to me to get him a place on a railroad 
at the West, promising never to touch liquor 
again. He kept his pledge for a few months and 
then his poor wife came to my office and told me 
that her husband had fallen down stairs and brok- 
en his skull. Strange to say he recovered from 
this accident — but while he was in the hospital 
his father, who had given him all his proper- 
ty to start him in business, died in the almshouse, 
and there was not a friend or relation to speak a 
parting word to the poor old man. But little 
more remains to be told of this sad, sad case," 
continues the merchant who tells the story. " I 
saw the man a few days ago. He was partly 
drunk and he came into my office under the pre- 
tence of selling me something, but really to beg, 
and he owned to me that he got drunk whenever 



THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH. 23 

he had money ; did not believe there was a God 
or a future, wanted to die, the sooner the better, 
could n't and would n't keep from drinking." 

Such is the awful story, which might be dupli- 
cated a thousand times today in every large city, of 
misery and heartache and anguish and hopeless- 
ness, of a soul in perdition, even in this world. 

I have spoken of this evil which we are consid- 
ering under the title — King Alcohol. With 
good reason do I call him King. Whether we 
consider his revenues or the number of his sub- 
jects or the completeness of his authority over his 
vassals we find that no monarch exercises such a 
wide and absolute sway as King Alcohol. 

Consider first his revenues : King Alcohol, 
with what is paid into his treasury in this one 
land of ours, the United States of America, could 
buy out today all the presidents and crowned 
heads of the old and new world. 

Nine hundred millions of dollars is the yearly 
liquor bill of the United States alone. An almost 
inconceivable sum. We used to say that Cotton 
was King, but the value of our cotton goods is 
not a quarter part of that sum. The value of 



24 DANGER SIGNALS. 

woolen goods is only about another quarter of 
the liquor bill. Our church property has been 
accumulating for generations, and yet the value 
of all church property in the United States, of all 
denominations, is less than one half that of the 
liquor men pour down their throats every year. 
We boast of our public schools and point with 
pride to our fine buildings and excellent system, 
but the amount paid for public education in this 
free republic is only $91,000,000, while the 
amount paid for rum, whiskey, wine, and beer, is 
$900,000,000. Our countrymen pay ten times as 
much to ruin themselves body and soul every 
year, as they do to educate the minds of their 
children. We think that the contribution box is 
passed pretty often, and that a large sum must be 
raised for the conversion of the heathen at home 
and abroad in the hundred thousand churches of 
our land, but for every dollar that goes into the 
missionary society two hundred dollars go into 
the till of the rumseller. The yearly liquor bill 
of this country has been represented by a black 
line four inches long, and the amount given for 
foreign and home missions by all the churches in 



THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH. 25 

all this land, is proportionately represented by a 
shadowy, hair-like line, almost too narrow to 
measure. 

Says Dr. Dorchester : " The indirect cost being 
allowed to be as much as the direct cost of liquors, 
the total liquor bill would be $1,800,000,000, or 
equal to the aggregate cost of bread, meat, wool- 
en and cotton goods, boots and shoes, public edu- 
cation and also the production of gold and silver. 
It would pay off all the state, county, and mu- 
nicipal debts of the United States and leave an 
amount equal to the yearly gross receipts of all 
the railroads in the country. It would pay the 
national debt in one year." So much for the 
revenues of King Alcohol. 

Then think of his subjects as well as his enor- 
mous revenues and we see what a mighty mon- 
arch we are dealing with. Among the high and 
the low does he claim his subjects, among the 
rich and the poor, among the young and the old. 
He is not dainty in his choice of retainers, this 
old monarch. He claims sometimes the fair 
young damsel in the careful home, but he does 
not despise the haggard bloated beldame in the 
2 



26 DANGEE SIGNALS. 

brothel. He often seeks the comparatively pure 
young man and drags him out from under his 
father's roof, out of the church, out of the Sunday- 
school class, into his own domain, but he is no 
less willing to accept the service and tribute of 
the old sot steeped in filth to his very lips, and 
he continues him in his service until every power 
of body and mind and soul is corrupted and 
debauched, and he totters into an untimely grave 
almost as vile, almost as much of a fiend as those 
to whom he goes. 

Not only is King Alcohol the monarch of indi- 
viduals, but he is ruler of cities and nations as 
well. If all indications which wise men see are 
not deceptive he is the ruler of the city of Bos- 
ton. Says Edward Everett Hale : " This city is 
now governed by what is virtually a corporation 
of dealers in liquor. There are about twenty- 
nine hundred of them, rather more than less — 
who have been licensed. If we suppose that each 
of these men employs at his bar two others, there 
are about ten thousand in all who have one 
purpose, one instinct, one common interest. — 
That interest is to sell as much liquor every 



THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH. 27 

daj r as they can. The community of interest 
and of motive makes of them, I say, virtually a 
corporation. They defend each other when they 
are sued. They pay from a common fund the 
expenses of a trial. They vote for the same can- 
didates when the day of election comes, and 
from the government which elects them they 
expect and receive certain distinct services." 

Surely, whether we consider his revenues or 
his subjects or the army of rumsellers who officer 
these subjects, we see that King Alcohol is a 
mighty monarch and his sway an awful sway. 

Once more we may well call him KING Alco- 
hol when we think of the completeness of his do- 
minion and of his authority over his subjects. 

There have been many tyrants whose rule has 
been well-nigh absolute, but none who ever possess- 
ed a tithe of the power of this king. Many a 
monarch has been able to take the life of his sub- 
jects and confiscate his property and sequester his 
estate, but none could cause the heart to beat fast 
or slow, and the nerves to shake, and the brain to 
reel at his pleasure, like King Alcohol. Careful 
experiments have been made in scientific circles 



28 DANGER SIGNALS. 

and it has been proved beyond a doubt that very 
small quantities of alcohol, the amount contained 
in half a table-spoonful of spirits, sensibly and 
decidedly affects the sense of touch or feeling, the 
sense of weight or the muscular sense, and the 
sense of sight or vision, and makes them less 
trustworthy and serviceable. 

It has been proved by careful, scientific experi- 
ment, that a wine-glass of liquor will increase the 
action of the heart so as to cause it to do every 
twenty-four hours from an eighth to a quarter 
more work than is necessary in driving the blo«>d 
throughout the system, thus weakening and wear- 
ing out the system with every heart-beat. There 
was never another tyrant that had such absolute 
power as King Alcohol, even affecting every in- 
voluntary motion of the heart. 

Many a tyrant, as I have said, has taken the 
life of his subjects, but never was there a despot 
who could compel his vassals to lose every moral 
instinct until they should hate father and mother, 
and beat and maul wife and child, and perhaps 
murder their nearest kinsman, yet this is just 
what King Alcohol does, so absolute is his con- 



THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH. 29 

trol. It is not many years ago since a young 
man, mad with drink, killed his father and mother 
and cut out their hearts, which he roasted and ate, 
and, in fiendish atrocity, this crime hardly falls be- 
low that which we often read in the daily prints. 

Many an Eastern Despot has confiscated the 
property of his subjects and robbed them of their 
crops in harvest, but never was there such a rob- 
ber chief as King Alcohol who every day filches 
something out of the pockets and the estate of 
every man in America. Whenever there is a bad 
harvest, distress is felt in every poor man's home 
throughout the civilized world, but if the seed 
which is cast into the mellow soil should fail to 
produce one half a crop, the misery which would 
ensue would not be one hundredth part of that 
which will be produced by the seed which the 
rumseller and the distiller and the brewer are 
sowing. 

There was a petty little ruler down in one 
of the Central American States who, not long 
ago, encroached on the territory of his neighbors, 
and our government thought it worth while to 
send to the Isthmus twelve hundred troops to 



30 DANGER SIGNALS. 

keep that little tyrant within reasonable bounds, 
lest he should injure the property or rights 
of a few of our citizens, or trespass upon our 
shadowy claim to a right of way through the 
Isthmus, and yet, all the while, a monster tyrant, 
who is trampling upon the rights of ten thousand 
homes, yea upon the lives and eternal hopes of 
millions of our fellow citizens, is allowed to go on 
his murderous way unchecked and even un- 
questioned by our national government. 

A short time ago the story came from Birming- 
ham, as quoted by Mr. Gustaffson in his book, of 
three little girls, nine, ten, and twelve years old, 
who purchased whiskey, got drunk, and almost 
died in consequence. The same paper contained 
the account of three dogs falling sick upon the 
road to the meet for fox hunting, presumably 
having been poisoned. In this case great indig- 
nation was expressed by the public and a reward 
of fifty pounds offered for the arrest of the poison- 
er. There was no indignation expressed at the 
poisoning of the girls with liquor and no reward 
offered for the conviction of the poisoner. That 
shows how much more a dog is worth than a 



THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH. 31 

girl in a Christian land. That shows the sway of 
King Alcohol. 

Said an English paper some time since : " On 
Monday morning the magistrates of Liverpool had 
before them twenty-two boys and girls under the 
age of seventeen, all of whom had been found 
beastly drunk in the public streets on Sunday and 
unable to take care of themselves. Again on a 
given Sunday 22,000 children were counted in 
the public-houses and beer-shops of Manchester ; 
and a clergyman, entering one of the beer- 
shops at one in the morning, found it full of boys 
and girls drinking." I am glad to believe that 
the curse of juvenile drinking has not assumed 
proportions so tremendous in this land of ours, 
but I have been told by a captain of police in 
this city of Boston, that boys ten years old have 
been brought to his station house too drunk to 
get to their homes. 

Such, young men, is the horrible, sickening 
work of this tyrant of the nineteenth century. 
Would that I could excite in you such a loathing 
and disgust of him, that you would not only keep 
yourselves free from his shackles, but that you 



32 DANGER SIGNALS. 

would also arise in the might of your young man- 
hood to sweep from our beloved land this curse 
of the ages. 

If a drop of patriotic blood courses through 
your veins ; if you ever cry in sincerity, " God 
bless our native land," may you also cry in the 
same breath, " down with King Alcohol." 

I wonder if any one will read this chapter who 
feels that his own manhood is being undermined, 
that he is one of the serfs, that he is in the chain- 
gang, that his master is King Alcohol. 

Let me tell any one who feels in this way of an- 
other King, a stronger King than King Alcohol, 
a King with more subjects and larger revenues 
and mightier power. I know not how you can 
escape from King Alcohol except by transferring 
your allegiance to this King. Your will is weak, 
home influences are unavailing, even a mother's 
prayers and sobs you forget, your pledge will be 
broken, the antidote that you take will not quench 
your thirst. This King will be by your side in 
every trying hour of temptation, He will break 
your shackles, He will rescue you from the 
clutches of the enemy, He will never leave you 
nor forsake you. His name is Jesus Christ. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE HENCHMEN OF KING ALCOHOL. 

King Alcohol, too Wise to Come for his Victims Him- 
self, Sends his Better Looking Henchmen. Per- 
sonal Experience of Successful Business Men. 
Bad Companions. Few Boys Enter the Hum 
Shops for the First Time Alone. The Boston 
Boys' Solemn Compact. Weak Will — the Trai- 
tor. Idleness. Why Some of Boston's Business 
Men are Bich. Busyness that is not Business. 
Hope for All. 

While speaking to you, in the last chapter, con- 
cerning the ravages of King Alcohol, I was fully 
aware that he often did not come himself to claim 
his victims, but usually sent in the first place cer- 
tain retainers who are more winning and attract- 
ive to look upon than himself. In fact should 
he come himself and claim the allegiance of any 
young man, his foul and bloated countenance, 
his fetid breath, his reeling gait, his rags and 
wounds, would frighten away the most reckless. 
He knows too much for this, does this astute old 
2* 33 



34 DANGER SIGNALS. 

enemy of the race, and so he has a score of 
menials, better looking and better dressed than 
himself, ready to do his bidding, and bring the 
victim under his sway. My many correspondents 
have recognized this truth and they have pointed 
out to me for your sakes some of these pimps 
and procurers of the great enemy, some of those 
who fetch and carry for King Alcohol. 

I have chosen to call them the Henchmen of 
King Alcohol. A henchman, according to the 
original derivation of the word, is one who follows 
at the haunch of the king or noble; in other 
words, one who is always hovering near his lord, 
ready to do his bidding. That is exactly the po- 
sition of some of these enemies of yours of which 
I shall speak in this chapter. 

These henchmen do not lurk in the drinking 
saloon alone. They go out upon the street, they 
button-hole a young man on his w&y home from 
the prayer-meeting, they knuckle down with the 
boy who is playing marbles "for keeps," they 
swarm in dull times when apprentices are out of 
work, they are particularly active at the noon 
hour, and during the long evening when the day's 



THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH. 35 

work is over, they always ride in the smoking car, 
they are fond of the innuendo and the low jest and 
the smutty story. When a young man begins to 
keep company with them, they rarely leave him 
until they have carried him over, body and soul, 
into the camp of King Alcohol. 

Several of the successful men of Boston have 
told me the story of their early lives, and I notice 
that in every case these men have not only avoided 
the Prince of Evil who hides in the demijohn and 
the beer-keg, but have given to all his myrmidons 
a wide berth. Let me tell you the story of two or 
three of these successful lives. One man, who is 
known throughout the whole city for his widely- 
bestowed and judicious benevolence, says: "I 
came to Boston a poor boy more than fifty years 
ago. I came without money, but with that great- 
est of earthly blessings, a praying mother at home. 
I came with the full determination that, if God 
spared my life, I would be a successful man. 
Every young man should begin with this determi- 
nation. Then, having chosen some trade or occu- 
pation, stick to it, keeping the old maxim in 
mind, 'honor and shame from no condition rise.' " 



36 DANGER SIGNALS. 

That determination cherished and held to and 
realized at last left no room in that man's life for 
any of the henchmen of King Alcohol. 

Another one writes me : " I began business a 
poor boy. My mother died when I was an infant. 
My father was a clergyman, poor in this world's 
goods, and could give his boys no financial help. 
As a matter of fact I began business at the age of 
fifteen with a capital of five dollars. My first 
factory was a one story building, fifteen feet by 
twelve feet. My first product was a carpet bag 
full of the articles I made, which I sold from door 
to door. I struggled with poverty and many 
obstacles. I worked half the night many a night, 
and at two or three o'clock in the morning I 
crawled up into the little attic over my little 
shop, hardly large enough for a dog to sleep in, 
and after an hour or two of sleep, got up and went 
at it again. My factory has grown to cover three 
acres ; my product has grown from a carpet bag 
full to six tons a day, and the goods of my manu- 
facture are now sold in every civilized country. 
I never used tobacco, cider, or beer. I never 
gambled or read low story papers or dime novels, 



THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH. 37 

bat supplemented my meager educational advan- 
tages with good reading. 

"When a young man I canvassed twenty-two 
states in the Union, selling my goods. I always 
refrained from business on Sunday, and went to 
church wherever Sunday overtook me, and had 
I a voice that would drown Niagara I would say 
to every young man, ' See to it that you lay the 
foundation of your character well. Touch not, 
taste not, beer, cider, anything that contains 
alcohol.' " 

Still another gentleman, who is honored by all 
who know him, tells me that he came to Boston 
from the country forty years ago and applied for 
work. 

"What can you do?" said the man to whom he 
applied. " I can work," replied the boy, " and am 
willing to learn." He went to work in the hum- 
blest place, he was contented to step first on the 
lowest rung of the ladder. In seven years he was 
admitted as equal partner in the concern; later 
still he bought out his old employer and now, 
after forty years, still does business in the old 



38 DANGER SIGNALS. 

store, where twoscore years ago he went to work 
as errand boy. 

I mention these cases for the encouragement of 
every struggling, disheartened young man who 
reads this book. It is no ephemeral success which 
these men have achieved. It is no Grant and Ward 
prosperity, where one goes up like a rocket and 
comes down like a stick. Much that goes by the 
name of success is not worthy of the name. Suc- 
cess is not money getting. The rich man may be 
a pitiful failure. The poor man may be a grand 
success. It is possible to buy gold too dear and 
political honor too dear. True success is the 
attainment of a worthy ideal without the least 
sacrifice of honor or manliness. 

That is what these men to whose lives I have 
referred have gained and I think I can tell you in 
a single sentence the secret of their success. 
They sedulously shunned not only King Alcohol 
but all his henchmen. 

I have space to mention but three of these 
henchmen but from looking at these three you 
can know the whole tribe, for they all have a 



THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH. 39 

family resemblance. These three shall be Bad 
Companions, A Weak Will, and Idleness. I men- 
tion these three out of the host of myrmidons 
whom Alcohol has at his beck and call because 
they are the three upon whom my correspondents 
most insist. 

I venture to say that not one boy in five hun- 
dred ever went into a rum shop alone for the first 
time. He went first because he was asked to go; 
because some companion took him by the arm 
and said " Let us see what is going on in there." 
Oh! if he could only know that that bad com- 
panion came to him directly from the devil, if he 
could see the grinning face of Apollyon leering 
at him over that companion's shoulder, how he 
would start back in fright and dread ! 

I know of young men who are going to the bad 
as fast as time can carry them, and I know the 
cause of their downward course, — it is some evil 
companion, whom they have not moral courage to 
break away from. They walk with him to school 
or business, they sit with him in church, they 
turn to him for his sneer or smile when the most 
solemn truths are being urged upon them. The 



40 DANGER SIGNALS. 

tears of mother, the warnings of father, the coun- 
sel of pastor, are of no avail because of this evil 
companion. 

In sorrow of heart I say that there are some 
young people of my acquaintance whom I have 
given up as far as any direct appeal to their con- 
science goes, because I see that they are not will- 
ing to break with their bad companions. It is 
utterly useless. I can only pray and watch for 
the time when that evil genius is not by their 
side. No more surely does the watchful bird of 
the air swoop down from its perch to capture the 
seed which the husbandman has just dropped, 
than does this bird of evil omen swoop- upon the 
good seed of the word which is dropped in their 
heart. The warnings which the business men of 
Boston send you on this point are many and 
specific. 

One of them whose name would carry with it 
much weight, did I feel at liberty to give it, says : 
" When I look back upon my own narrow escape 
from evils of which I can hardly conceive the end, 
it brings tears to my eyes. I think the turning- 
point was my going to California at the age of 



THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH. 41 

nineteen and by that means breaking off the ac- 
quaintances I had formed. I was away so long 
that when I returned they had all scattered. I 
did not think at the time I was very bad, but 
still from my present standpoint it looks bad 
enough. I can look around me here in Boston 
and see many a man who is a perfect failure 
today, who had the brightest prospects when 
young, and bad company was the first step down- 
ward." 

Young man, if you feel that you have not the 
moral stamina to break with the companions who 
are dragging you down, if you feel that there is 
no other way to throw off this social chain, every 
link of which is a fetter for your soul, then I beg 
you to leave everything and flee for your life, 
though it be to California, or Australia, or Alaska, 
or Patagonia, though you leave father and mother 
and home and church behind you, flee as you 
would flee from the pestilence. 

Better bury yourself forever in some foreign 
land and never see your native city again, if the 
influences at home are too strong for you to resist, 
than bring heartache and sorrow to every one who 



42 DANGER SIGNALS. 

loves you by going down to death and ruin, side 
by side with some rake whom you have allowed 
to link arms with you, and with whom you feel 
you must keep step. This is a heroic remedy 
that I am proposing I know, and I hope that it is 
not necessary in most cases, but I am convinced 
that some wills are so weakened, that some well- 
meaning young men are so under the dominion of 
evil companions that their only safety lies in a 
new set of surroundings and companions. Christ 
our Lord proposed heroic measures when milder 
ones should fail. " If thy hand or thy foot offend 
thee, [or cause thee to stumble,] cut them off 
and cast them from thee ; it is better for thee to 
enter into life halt or maimed, rather than having 
two hands or two feet to be cast into everlasting 
fire. And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out 
and cast it from thee, it is better for thee to enter 
into life with one eye rather than having two eyes 
to be cast into hell fire." If your companion, 
though he be your best friend, cause you to stum- 
ble, if he leads you into bad ways, if he makes 
you careless and thoughtless and indifferent of 
the good and complacent of the evil, cast him off, 



THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH. 43 

flee from him as Joseph fled out of the way of 
temptation, though you leave the very garment 
by which he seeks to hold you in the clutches of 
the tempter. 

But there is another side to this question of 
companionship. If there are evil companions 
whose influence is tremendous in dragging down, 
there are also good companions whose influence is 
no less powerful in building up. Place yourself 
among them. "Get in" with this "set." They 
are not exclusive. Their circle will widen. If 
you have the same aims and motives they will 
gladly receive you. 

Let me tell you of a compact made by four 
Boston young men nearly forty years ago, when 
temperance pledges were by no means as common 
as today, for it shows that the power of good com- 
panionship and of union in a good cause, is no 
less potent than union in evil. This pledge, drawn 
up by these four young men, reads as follows: 
"Believing that the use of intoxicating liquor, 
as a beverage, is both needless, hurtful, and injuri- 
ous to the human system, that it tends to demoral- 
ize the social, civil, and religious interests of all; 



44 DANGER SIGNALS. 

believing that the use of profane language is a 
low and vulgar habit, betraying ignorance, and 
that no one who continues its use will respect 
himself or be respected by others; and believ- 
ing that the use of tobacco, whether chewed or 
smoked, is injurious and hurtful ; We do hereby 
declare our fixed and unalterable determination 
to abstain forever from their use and to rest 
strictly on the principles of total abstinence, and 
that we will, to the best of our endeavors, try to 
have these principles adopted by all, and that we 
will live firmly, so that all may know that these 
principles tend to happiness, peace, and comfort, 
making good citizens, faithful, honest men." 
The pledge then goes on to denounce slavery and 
war, particularly the Mexican war which was 
then in progress. It adopts the Bible as the rule 
of conduct for the signers, and thus this manly 
paper ended : " And, finally, believing that God 
created man for happiness here and hereafter 
and made woman to be his companion, and has 
declared that by the sweat of his brow shall man 
earn his daily bread, therefore we have settled 
down on this firm resolution: Honest industry 



THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH. 45 

and virtuous marriage. To the full and faithful 
performance of all which, we pledge our most 
sacred honor." 

As three of these noble young men have gone 
over to the majority and the other lives in another 
city, I think I need not hesitate to tell you that 
the pledge ended thus : " Given under our hands 
and seals, this the 16th day of January A. d. 1848. 
Lewis Smith, Benjamin K. Ames, Thomas C. 

SlMONDS, ELIPHALET PACKARD." 

There we see the power and possibility of a 
union and companionship that builds up character 
and insures a noble life. 

But these henchmen of King Alcohol do not all 
direct their attacks from the outside. They have 
a faculty of assaulting the citadel of Mansoul 
from within, and one of the retainers who often 
does his bidding is the very porter of the citadel, 
the doorkeeper of the castle. He is called 
Weak Will. When Satan corrupts even the 
guards within the city, little hope is there indeed 
of resistance to the siege which King Alcohol lays 
to the character. This recreant, traitorous door- 
keeper plays into the hands of the bad companions 



46 DANGER SIGNALS. 

of whom I have just spoken, and opens the gates 
of the soul. If it were not for this traitor within, 
the evil influences from without could do little 
harm. How many wretched homes would be 
made happy if only this doorkeeper, Weak 
Will, could be removed, and a stalwart, uncon- 
querable, resolute determination could be put in 
his place. 

One gentleman tells me of a young man who 
came to him the other day confessing that for 
four years he had averaged a quart of whiskey a 
day. He had been compelled to sell out what 
little business he had left and has gone away, 
leaving wife and three children without support, 
when he could have a fine business. He says, 
"he cannot get along without his ivhiskey" Ah, 
poor Weak Will, so often has it played the traitor, 
that King Alcohol with all his train of evil spirits 
has come and taken full possession. 

Here is what another says, who is honored in 
many circles of Boston : 

" Where is the young man when he deliberately 
entertains the thought that he has a right to 
indulge in sin? Has he not already prostituted 



THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH. 47 

his soul to evil? Has not the clean-cut line 
between good and evil become to him so befogged 
and indistinct that he is sure to hesitate in the 
hour of temptation ? 

" There is a spot where only a positive ' no ' is 
safety. If there be inability to say 4 no' to evil, the 
poor, weakened, undecided soul is open to the 
attacks of the Wicked One on every side. 

" Tell the young man that the ' I '11 take the 
risk,' ' I don't care,' ' I 'm not afraid to mingle 
in companionship with the wicked,' is going over 
the picket line into the enemy's quarters. Tell 
him the consequence will be a divided, careless, 
reckless, impoverished soul, wasted in frivolity, 
dwarfed in ignorance, made miserable by skepti- 
cism, blackened by infidelity, abandoned to 
trample upon God 's law and the Sabbath ; and, 
soon, loving evil and hating good, his will 
become a sin-sold soul." 

The third, and last henchman of King Alcohol 
which I shall mention, is Idleness, and concerning 
the evil which he has wrought, I have a mass of 
testimony, all of which I cannot begin to give 
you. A very prominent railroad man, the presi- 



48 DANGEK SIGNALS. 

dent of one of our largest roads, writes me : " If 
I were to address young men, I should especially 
urge upon them the need of forming industrious 
habits ; there was never a truer saying than that 
' Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to 
do.' One great difficulty," he continues, "which 
stands in the way of the success of many men, 
as it seems to me, is the desire to get along 
without work, to obtain easy positions where thej^ 
can dress well and have a plenty of leisure. All 
through my life I have seen man after man 
wrecked on these shoals. Having no fixed habits 
of industry they drift off and fall into the pits 
always open for them." 

Another man who has done as much as any 
other for the boys of Boston, writes: "If every 
young man could only see the importance of some 
definite aim in life worth living for ! The multi- 
tudes are drifting. There is nothing so hard to 
steer as a ship in a calm." 

Says another: "In my judgment the wise 
thing to be done is to keep our boys from 
idleness ; have them employed in some business 
even if it is not profitable in a pecuniary way." 



THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH. 49 

Another writes : " In my view of the matter, 
the seeds of evil are oftenest sown early in life. 
In the absence of employment, boys are brought 
into temptation by staying away from their 
homes, during times of idleness or relaxation, and 
perhaps frequently in the evening with doubtful 
companions, after the duties of the day are over. 
And it is during these evening hours that the 
tempter takes his time to scatter the seeds that so 
frequently bring forth the fruit of death." 

Here I record the wise words of still another of 
your friends: "If forty-eight years of life teach 
me anything they most certainly reveal to me 
that there is not an evil known to our young 
people so dangerous and seductive as idleness. 
In my opinion it is the parent ■ vice of all others. 
We often speak of intemperance as though it was 
the cause of all, or nearly all, vice and misery. 
Although a terrible curse, I think upon careful 
investigation, we shall find that nine cases in 
every ten can be traced to idleness. I happen to 
know just how several of our most honored men 
of Boston were brought up, and taught to work ; 
their fathers being farmers in my native town. 
3 



50 DANGER SIGNALS. 

One has twice occupied the Mayor's chair, and 
declined the third nomination, to the regret of 
our first business men, and he could have been 
our Governor had he not declined the nomination. 
I will also mention the president of one of our 
neighboring colleges, whom I very often met on 
my four-mile walk to my work, with his farm 
tools in his hand, all ready for as hard a day's 
work as any. Take the case of that wonderful 
man, Hon. Oakes Ames. When a mere boy he 
loaded his two-horse team with shovels and was 
on his way at one o'clock in the morning to sell 
in Boston, twenty miles distant. Huge snow- 
drifts could not stop this lad then, and later on 
when our Government wished to build the Union 
Pacific Railroad, and was unable to find a man or 
corporation to undertake it, this same plucky lad 
took the contract, and started with his load of 
shovels and built the road to the astonishment of 
the whole world. Did these men waste their 
time and opportunities in rum shops, low theaters, 
gambling dens, low ball-rooms, or in reading 
trashy novels?" 

But there is a kind of busyness which is not 



THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH. 51 

business, a kind of occupation which is very near 
akin to idleness. Activity is not necessarily 
work; the harrying, bustling, stirring, impatient 
man may be the veriest idler. 

Really to escape this henchman, Idleness, one 
must have a high purpose, a noble endeavor, a 
useful end in view. One may do many little 
things and petty things and do them all scrupu- 
lously and carefully, but one who really succeeds 
can have no petty aims. Mr. Cross says in the 
biography of his wife, George Eliot, that she had 
a wonderful " genius for taking pains." She did 
ten thousand little things well, but every one of 
them tended toward a great result. One of my 
correspondents has sent me the following clipping, 
which appeared first, I think, in the Wide Awake. 
" Two men stood at the same table in a large 
factory in Philadelphia, working at the same 
trade. Having an hour for their nooning every 
day, each undertook to use it in accomplishing a 
definite purpose ; each persevered for about the 
same number of months, and each won success at 
last. One of these two mechanics used his daily 
leisure hour in working out an invention. When 



52 DANGER SIGNALS. 

it was complete he changed his workman's apron 
for a broad-cloth suit, and moved out of a tene- 
ment house into a brown stone mansion. The 
other man — what did he do ? Well, he spent an 
hour each day, during most of a year, in the very 
difficult undertaking of teaching a little dog to 
stand on his hind feet and dance a jig, while he 
played the tune. At last accounts he was work- 
ing ten hours a day at the same trade and at his 
old wages, and finding fault with the fate that 
made his fellow workman rich while leaving him 
poor. Leisure minutes may bring golden grain 
to mind as well as purse, if one harvests wheat 
instead of chaff." 

I do not intend by any means to imply that I 
have told you all the henchmen of King Alcohol. 
The old enemy has ten thousand servants to do 
his bidding ; in fact almost any good thing can 
be perverted until it leads one downward and 
not upward. One of my correspondents well 
illustrates this truth when he says : " Accom- 
plishments and recreations, harmless in them- 
selves, may under some circumstances lead to 
ruin. I remember that at school we had an 



THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH. 53 

exercise in reading entitled ' the dangers of being 
a good singer ' which greatly impressed me, and 
which told the story of a youth whose society was 
so much sought in places of conviviality, because 
of his ability to sing a good song, that in the end, 
he became a frequenter of the lowest resorts, and 
obtained a miserable livelihood by singing nightly 
in a tavern." 

It is a delightful thing to be a good singer, a 
God given talent to be prized and cultivated ; it 
is worth much to be a good conversationalist, to 
have a genial disposition, a cordial manner, but 
we must allow God to have control of them all, 
as ministering spirits to lead us upward, and not 
let the Devil use them, as his henchmen, to drag 
us down. 

And now I would close this chapter also with a 
word of encouragement to those who are tempted 
and tried. Let me say to every one of you, 
young friends, that your case is not hopeless. 
However sorely you may feel the terrible pressure 
of bad companionship, however weak your wills 
may be, however the hard times have enforced 
idleness upon you, until you feel unable to do any 



54 DANGER SIGNALS. 

useful work in the world, though you may have 
been dragged by these henchmen into the very 
clutches of King Alcohol, your case is not hope- 
less, Christ has more servants than King Alcohol. 
Young men who have been walking arm in arm 
with these henchmen for years have broken loose. 
Men who have been picked out of the gutter have 
risen to the pinnacle of an honorable life. There is 
only one way; all mere moral reform, without 
religion, is uncertain. It is of little use to try to 
break with the henchmen of Alcohol unless you 
take up with the servants of Christ ; but if you 
will do this there is eternal hope for you, for one 
who was never known to lie has said, " My grace 
is sufficient for thee." 






CHAPTER IV. 

DIRT IN INK. 

Why Many Business Men Place Bad Literature 
First among the Enemies of Youth. The Tree 
with the Rotten Heart. The Insidiousness of 
this Evil. The Gypsy Boy's Vengeance. Indict- 
ment of the Bad Book. It Gives a Strained, 
Unnatural View of Life. It Glorifies Evil. 
It Leaves no Room for the Good. The Jelly- 
Bag Reader. The Corrupt Literature of 
Prance. Tree-Frog Minds. What the Law can 
Do. 

I have entitled this chapter " Dirt in Ink," for 
I know of no more expressive or appropriate 
words to express the exact idea I have in mind 
than these, which not long ago stood at the head 
of an editorial in one of our Boston dailies. I am 
not writing of literature, though it sometimes is 
falsely dignified by that name. I am not writing 
of anything that is worthy the name of book or 
magazine or newspaper, though these respectable 
words must often be thus disgraced, but I am 

55 



56 DANGEK SIGNALS. 

writing of what is only fit to be called dirt, dirt 
in printer's ink, dirt spread over white paper, dirt 
done up in packets, the shape of a book or pam- 
phlet, for this and nothing less and nothing better 
is all the vile reading of which I would warn 
my young friends. It is somewhat remarkable, 
though I cannot say that I am surprised at it, to 
find many of my correspondents among the busi- 
ness men placing bad literature in the very fore- 
front of the evils which assail the youth of today. 
I asked some of them to number with the figures 
1, 2, 3, 4, etc., the evils which in their opinion 
were the most flagrant and seductive, and very 
many of them wrote at the head, before intemper- 
ance, before licentiousness, before gambling, the 
words " Bad Literature." Surely this is not to be 
wondered at when we remember that the brothel 
in the book is usually seen before the real brothel, 
that the bar-room of the flash story-paper is 
known before the bar-room of wood and glass and 
decanters and beer-fountains. If we look for 
priority of influence we must usually seek for it 
in the gambling den of the printed page, and not 
in the gambling den where the rattle of the dice 



THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH. 57 

is heard. The poison is first poured into the 
stream out of the bad book. 

The insidiousness of this evil is one of its most 
dangerous features. If our boys come home 
with the taint of liquor in their breath we know 
it ; if we hear their latch key stealthily opening 
the door at one in the morning, we are pretty 
sure that they have not been at a prayer-meeting 
all the evening, and we can fight and pray against 
the evils that are threatening them ; but we do not 
know when their eyes first fall upon the salacious 
pictures in the shop-window on their way to 
school; we do not know when some ragged 
urchin thrusts a bad paper into their hands as 
they go to the grocer's, we do not know how they 
treasure it up and feast upon it in secret, untL 
their very life-blood begins to run in a tainted 
stream. We do not know ivhen these things are 
done, but we know that they are done, and this 
fact is enough to cause us, whether we are parents 
or young people, to give very earnest heed to 
these things. 

Says one very prominent merchant of our city : 
" Bad Literature is undoubtedly as rank a poison 
3* 



58 DANGER SIGNALS. 

to the young mind, as rum is to the body, and 
surely paves the way to many other terrible evils." 
Another no less widely known, who puts this 
evil first, says : " Impure literature enfeebles the 
mind and heart as deadly malaria does the body." 
Still another of my correspondents speaks of a 
kindred evil which often flows from bad reading 
and ought to be coupled with it. He says: 
" While I have marked bad literature as No. 1 on 
the list you give, I think that impure conversa- 
tion is another great evil, if not equally perni- 
cious in its effects. The tendency of the low jest 
and filthy story cannot be other than to contami- 
nate the mind." The filthy story which goes 
from mouth to mouth usually starts from the 
filthy book. Still another writes me as follows : 
"My topic is vile literature. If there is one 
method used by the satanic powers more effective 
than another in the preparation of victims for 
sorrow and disgrace in this life and the world to 
come it is the casting into the mellow soil of youth- 
ful minds of either sex the damnable imaginings 
of lust which are the seeds of an inevitable harvest 
embracing every sin in that fearful list in the 



THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH. 59 

fifth chapter of Galatians. Now and then one 
who has been contaminated may, by the grace of 
God, be snatched as a brand from the burning, 
but even then an impression made upon the 
youthful mind by an obscene picture or a seduc- 
tive story of lust and crime is never effaced. The 
wretched scar in the soul remains; it may be 
overgrown but never eradicated. I know a man 
today who would gladly sacrifice a great deal of 
what the world most prizes, if he could blot from 
his memory the impressions made in youth by one 
obscene book. 

" Before the same gale which a few years ago 
brought down the noble old elm upon the com- 
mon, a beautiful and stately maple succumbed, 
upon the lawn of a gentleman in Brookline. 
Upon examination a decayed spot was found at 
the point where the tree was broken off. The 
gentleman recollected, after some time, that many 
years before, when a boy, he had hacked a place 
in the trunk with an axe, when angered at some 
command of his father. After many years the 
bark grew over the place and the wound, to all 
appearances, had completely healed and the tree 



60 DANGER SIGNALS. 

was apparently as sound as any of its companions 
upon the lawn. But the winds blew and the 
storm beat upon it and it fell — because it had a 
rotten spot at the heart, though hidden from the 
eyes of men. Ah ! how little we know the cause 
of the sudden and unexpected fall of men and 
women, who are apparently fair and sound 
outside. If we could but examine into the inner 
being of such we should, I think, many times find 
just such concealed wound, made doubtless away 
back in youthful days by some vile story or print, 
which could never be completely healed, and that 
was the weak spot which caused so lamentable a 
fall. 

" You cannot swing too vigorously this danger 
signal before your boys and girls," continues this 
gentleman. " If they would be safe and happy, 
and enjoy pure thoughts in after years as well, 
implore them to give a wide berth to the cheap, 
filthy literature of the day." 

But that I may not be thought to speak 
entirely at random in this matter or to rely 
wholly upon the representations of others, let me 
tell you that I have made this a matter of careful 



THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH. 61 

study for a number of years past, and I am con- 
vinced that the strongest words of my corre- 
spondents are none too strong. I have seen our 
shop windows filled and our shop counters covered 
with this wretched stuff. I have seen our boys 
and girls eagerly gloating over the pictures dis- 
played in these windows, on their way to school 
and home again. I have seen these papers and 
the advertisements of them thrust into their very 
faces on the street corner. Let me give you an 
outline of one of these books. This one, which 
is the only one I have read, is called " The Gypsy 
Boy 's Vengeance." It is the only one I have 
read through, but, from a hasty glance at many of 
them, I am convinced that it does not go beyond 
the average in blood-curdling villainy. 

In the first chapter of the " Gypsy Boy's Ven- 
geance " a robber, Cartouche by name, runs off 
with the heroine of the story, a beautiful girl of 
high family, and the robber strikes a subordinate 
actor in the story to the floor with his clenched 
fist. In the second chapter a wild pursuit of the 
robber, who escapes in a hack, results in the 
shooting of the hackman and the arrest of the 



62 DANGER SIGNALS, 

robber. The third chapter is taken up with the 
wails of a noble lady and with her efforts to 
induce a young gypsy boy to kill and thus put 
out of the way a witness against her virtue. In 
the fourth chapter the robber, by the aid of his 
wife, escapes from prison, and, in his exit, by way 
of diversion, kills a man who is in the passage. 
In the fifth a hand to hand fight between the two 
principal characters is rehearsed. In the sixth the 
robber kills the warden of the prison and three 
guards. In the eighth the robber discards his 
wife who had saved his life many times, and takes 
up with a new attachment, in the meantime 
nearly killing the first. 

In the tenth seven or eight policemen are con- 
veniently disposed of, and as many more robbers 
have their throats cut. Evidently, as the plot 
thickens, the dramatis personce are becoming too 
numerous and so the author takes the shortest 
way to get rid of them and freely uses the knife 
and pistol upon his heroes. In this same chapter, 
besides murdering sixteen men and throwing one 
old woman into the river, we are treated to two 
fierce fights, in both of which the robber is vie- 



THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH. 63 

torious. In the eleventh chapter we enter a 
robber's cave, rich with treasure, and are con- 
ducted by a secret passage into the heart of Paris. 
In the twelfth the old woman who was thrown 
into the water again comes upon the stage, and is 
this time killed out and out, a haughty Spaniard 
is also run through with a sword, the heroine is 
shot through the heart, and the robber has a 
bullet neatly lodged in his back. In the fifteenth 
and last chapter the robber is tortured and then 
killed by being broken on the wheel, the haughty 
Spaniard is killed off in battle, and, there being 
nobody left to kill, (with one or two unimportant 
exceptions,) the story naturally comes to an end. 
Thus, in this short story, there are two cases of 
adultery, one elopement, nine bloody fights, and 
twenty-eight murders. 

This is a sample, and a fair sample, of what 
our boys and girls have thrust into their hands 
from the time they are able to spell out their 
a, b, abs. Such a tale is worse than the raw-head 
and bloody-bones stories at which we so often 
laugh, and of which I shall speak in another 



64 DAGGER SIGNALS. 

chapter. Much of it is absolutely filthy and 
unreportable. Let us not say that it is advertis- 
ing this stuff to call attention to it or to give an 
outline of one of these stories. It is impossible to 
advertise it more extensively than it is advertised 
at present. If you do not know of it, you, 
brethren and father, you, grave and reverend 
seigniors, are the only ones who do not know of 
it. If you are ignorant, your boys and girls are 
not. They have the advertisements of these 
papers and books thrust into their hands as they 
come out of school, they find them on the door- 
steps of your houses as they come home from play, 
they pick up the flyers, telling them about these 
stories, borne about everywhere on the wings of 
the wind, their eyes are attracted at a dozen shop 
windows by pictures which have a horrible fasci- 
nation and which often border on the indecent if 
they are not wholly vile and corrupting. With 
these odds against them, the children of today are 
beginning the battle of life. The Devil is attack- 
ing the citadel of their souls in its weakest part, 
and, by appealing to their imagination and their 



THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH. 65 

love of excitement and adventure, he is seeking 
to undermine the very foundations of manhood 
and womanhood. 

This is no blind and hidden malady, whose 
secret springs of poison we cannot get at. It is 
something we can see and understand. The evil 
is right in our midst. We can put our hands upon 
it. We can crush it out if we will. It is a sub- 
ject which concerns every community, every 
church, every family in the land. It is a theme 
which no one of us can afford to ignore, for, 
while we shut our eyes, the Devil, on these his 
newest wings of printed paper, is flying into the 
inmost circles of our homes. No one of us can 
say, " I am safe," " My boys are beyond such in- 
fluences," " My girls are incorruptible," " It will 
not hurt my children if they do read such stuff." 
We make a great mistake when we reason in this 
way. 

Smut always crocks. Pitch always sticks. 
When soot is in the air it is just as likely to fall 
on your head as anywhere else, and the smut of 
these dirty periodicals is actually in the air today. 
Every age has its peculiar dangers, and needs its 



66 DANGER SIGNALS. 

peculiar, trumpet-toned warnings. One note of 
alarm which we need to sound today, in this latter 
part of the nineteenth century, is " Beware of vile 
books." Centuries ago, when books were scarce 
and print was sealed except to a very few, the 
exhortation was, or should have been, " Read, read, 
unlock for yourselves the treasures of the world's 
lore." Now the cry of pulpit and press and 
parental authority should be : " Beware of what 
you read, shut the book, burn the paper, unless 
they are worth reading." Better let the field lie 
fallow than fill it with thistles and brambles and 
dog-wood and deadly night-shade. Better let the 
mind be empty than fill it with seeds which will 
inevitably produce an abundant crop pf disease 
and death. Dr. Johnson used to say, that " the 
most miserable man was he who could not read 
on a rainy day." We must change that motto and 
say : " The most miserable man is he who reads 
only vile trash on a rainy day." 

"Don Juan literature," says Cunningham 
Geikie, " is as pestiferous as an open ditch in hot 
weather. No genius or wit can excuse or neutral- 
ize its wantonness. Coarse feeding makes coarse 



THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH. 67 

flesh. Filth in ess, like toad- stools, springs rank 
from invisible seeds, and the whole race of unclean 
books is no better than molds and smuts and mil- 
dews." 

Let me warn you of this seductive form of evil 
in the vigorous words. of Scripture: " Avoid it, 
pass not by it, turn from it and pass away." 

To be very specific. 

I indict this whole class of publications not 
only for corrupting the imaginations and inflam- 
ing the passions of the young but I indict even 
the very best of them for giving a strained and 
unnatural picture of life, and thus unfitting our 
boys and girls for real life. How can our boys take 
up the humdrum duties of school on Monday 
morning when they have spent all Sunday riding 
over the plains with Texas rangers, and robbing 
stage coaches with Missouri ruffians? How can 
they confine themselves to the routine of the 
counter or the farm or the work-bench when their 
minds are dancing among the wild delights of a 
harem of houris ? How small and paltry will the 
honest nine shillings appear for a day's wages 
when the mind has been dazzled by the priceless 



68 



DANGER SIGNALS. 



jewels and gold of the robber's cave ? These vis- 
ions, in many, many cases, cannot but work the 
deadliest ruin. The school-book loses its inter- 
est, the shop or farm becomes distasteful and only 
excites disgust and longing to escape, and honest 
wages are too mean to strive for ; and thus an- 
other life is wrecked, and wrecked on the rock of 
these wretched periodicals. 

In the second place I indict these publications 
for glorifying evil. This, too, is universally true 
of them. The effect of every one is to make sin 
attractive. To be sure the murderer sometimes 
comes to grief, and the robber is occasionally 
caught, but he is, after all,, a noble fellow, and the 
rollicking fun and excitement of his life more 
than make up for any "temporary unpleasant- 
ness " he may have with the authorities. " Every- 
thing that is naughty is nice " might be the motto 
in large capitals over every one of these bad 
books. In this way, by glorifying evil, these 
books seek to undermine and destroy all that 
good men in all the ages have built up with toil 
and pain. The Bible is given us to teach, among 
other things, that evil in the long run does not 



THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH. 69 

pay, — these books teach that it does pay. God, in 
nature and Providence, says over and over again: 
"Beware, beware, touch not the unclean thing. 
It brings disease, poverty, sickness, loneliness, 
sorrow, death. The soul that sinneth, it shall 
die." These books say, " No such thing. Wick- 
edness is very pleasant. Fondle it. Take it to 
your bosom. It will never hurt you." The law 
has made it its business in every civilized country 
on the globe to emphasize what God and the 
Bible say, to make crime dangerous and despi- 
cable and unattractive and hideous, by fine and 
prison and disgrace and the gallows-tree, and yet, 
these books say in effect : " The Bible is anti- 
quated, and God knows nothing about it, and the 
law is all wrong; for the freest, joliiest, bravest 
life in the world is that of the outlaw and the 
scamp." 

In the third place, I indict these publications 
for being not only wholly evil in themselves but 
for taking the place of what is good. There is 
nothing so entirely captivating and engrossing to 
the young as these very stories. When this Devil, 
whose name is Legion, enters their hearts he leaves 



70 DANGER SIGNALS. 

no spot for a good angel to occupy. Nay, he 
drives out sooner or later, every good influence 
and takes undisputed possession of the heart. As 
the serpent's deadly eye attracts the young bird so 
these books attract the young mind, when it gets 
within their spell, until it becomes too weak to 
resist their allurements, and the boy or girl finds 
it as impossible to go by the secret shelf or closet 
or drawer where the longed-for book lies, as it is 
for the drunkard to resist his cups or the lauda- 
num eater his opium. And what chance, O fellow 
Christians ! has the Spirit of God to influence 
such an over-wrought and preoccupied mind ? 

How can we hope that such a young person will 
ever feel his need of pardon and cleansing from 
defilement when his whole pleasure is found in 
scenes of defilement? How can we hope that our 
churches will be recruited or any of those causes 
which make for righteousness will be advanced 
when the minds of our young people are filled so 
full of scenes of vice, that there is no room for 
calmer, truer thoughts ? For this reason, if for no 
other, every good man and true ought to take up 
arms against this crying sin of our times. 



THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH. 71 

On these three charges I rest my indictment. 
Many more charges might be preferred, but surely 
these three are sufficient. These evil books unfit 
their readers for all real, honest life ; they glorify 
evil ; they exclude all that is good ; they enervate 
the mind, weaken the will, stunt the ambition, dull 
the conscience, sear moral perception, not for a 
month or a year but for a life-time. The com- 
plete victim of the bad book never recovers. 

Coleridge divides all readers into four classes: 
" The hour-glass readers, whose reading, like the 
sand, runs in and then out, leaving nothing behind ; 
the sponge readers, who imbibe everything only to 
return it as they got it, or dirtier ; the jelly-bag 
readers, who let the pure pass and keep only the 
dregs and refuse; and the fourth class who, like 
the slaves in Golconcla mines, cast aside all that is 
worthless and keep only the diamonds and gems." 
The class of books and papers of which I am 
speaking continually make jelly-bag readers who 
keep only the dregs and refuse, and this never 
gets strained out of their lives until the day they 
die. 

In a sister nation across the water literature is 



72 DANGER SIGNALS. 

notoriously corrupt. This trash which our boys are 
reading cultivates the very same tastes to which 
Eugene Sue and George Sand have catered. The 
most serious count which some Frenchmen bring 
against the Protestant reformation now prevailing 
in that country is that it is creating a demand for 
a Puritanic literature, and is supplying that de- 
mand, while it is in deadly and uncompromising 
opposition to loose morals and loose literature. 
Even M. Taine, fair and just as he usually is, can- 
not resist a fling at the purity of the best English 
fiction. In commenting upon Dickens he sneer- 
ingly says : " In Nicholas Nickleby you will show 
us two good young men, like all young men, mar- 
rying two good young women, like all young 
women. In Martin Chuzzlewit you will show us 
two more good young men, perfectly resembling 
the other two, marrying again two good young 
women, perfectly resembling the other two. In 
Dombey and Son there will be only one good 
young man and one good young woman ; — other- 
wise no difference. The reader would like to 
say to these characters, 6 Good little people, con- 
tinue to be very proper. 5 " 



THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH. 73 

This is the way that a highly cultivated and 
otherwise fair minded Frenchman can sneer at the 
purity of English literature, the purity which is 
its chief glory. Do you desire to exchange our 
Dickens for a George Sand ? our Thackeray for 
a Eugene Sue? our Hawthorne for a Zola? 
Toward lowering the tone of public morality, to- 
ward paving the way for making just such books 
the national literature of our land, these exciting, 
pernicious novels directly tend. 

There are a great many " tree-frog minds," as 
some one has expressed it, minds that take their 
color from that on which they feed. Among our 
boys and girls there are ten thousand of these tree- 
frog minds who feed on worthless fiction and 
whose whole lives w T ill be colored by it. " What 
do you read ? " said the late James T. Fields to 
the boy fiend Jesse Pomeroy, as quoted by Mr. 
Kent in his " New Commentary." " What do you 
read ? " said Mr. Fields. " Mostly one kind," was 
the reply, " mostly dime novels." " And what is 
the best book you have read ? " " Well,'' he replied, 
" I like Buffalo Bill best. It 's full of murders and 
pictures about murders." " And how do you feel 
4 



74 DANGER SIGNALS. 

after reading it ? " " Oh, I feel as if I wanted to 
go and do the same." But the great danger of 
these books is not that a few morbidly ferocious 
boys like Jesse Pomeroy, or a few maudlin, feather- 
headed girls will be ruined by this trashy novel 
reading. These results are probable enough and 
deplorable enough, but the great danger is that 
the mass of our boj 7 s and girls who are neither 
brutal, nor ferocious, nor feather-headed, will be 
tainted by this mass of printed corruption. Like 
the exhalation from a foul but unseen sewer it 
may poison the Yery air our children breathe 
before we wake up to the fact that the air is 
poisoned. 

And now let me speak for a moment of the rem- 
edies for this curse, for there are effective remedies. 
I will speak of other measures at another time, 
but I believe that the strong arm of the law 
should be invoked to save our children from 
this curse. I believe that the law can be en- 
forced against those who peddle this stuff upon 
the streets and in our news rooms, until every 
print that suggests an impure scene to a prurient 
imagination shall be torn from our shop windows. 



THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH. 75 

If we have law enough to compel the cleaning 
out of filthy sewers that may poison the physical 
health of the community, have we not law enough 
to clean out these ditchwater books and papers 
which will surely poison the morals of the com- 
munity ? 

If there is power enough in the law to shut up 
a drunken man simply because he is noisy and 
boisterous, is there not power enough to shut away 
from the sight of our boys and girls those books 
and pictures which will do them more harm than 
a regiment of drunkards ? 

I am not a visionary enthusiast in this matter. 
I do not know that public sentiment is ripe 
enough to sustain the law in prohibiting the blood 
and thunder novel, I do not know that it can yet 
drive " Buckskin Burke," and " Moccasin Mat," 
and " Shorty Jr., the Son of his Dad," into de- 
served oblivion, but I do believe that it can rid 
our country of all that is openly vile and lewd. 
I do believe that The Police News and The Po- 
lice Gazette and papers of that ilk can be prohib- 
ited and that decent eyes need no longer be of- 



76 DANGER SIGNALS. 

fended and young imaginations polluted by the 
pictures which they contain. 

I believe that the law can be so enforced that it 
shall be safe to publish the catalogues of girls' 
boarding schools ; and it is not safe to do so now, 
lest the harpies who vend this bad literature 
will use them for evil purposes. 

But we must not put off all the responsibility 
for the suppression of this evil upon the law 
makers. We have something to do, every one of 
us, to sustain the law, and to make a public senti- 
ment which can enforce the law. Let us each 
bear our full share of the responsibility and do our 
full duty toward making the literature of our land 
pure and ennobling. Parents, you who desire 
that j^our children should not live, even in imag- 
ination, with cut-throats and robbers ; young men, 
you who would not have your future wives ac- 
quainted with courtesans and harlots; young wo- 
men, you who would not have your future hus- 
bands imbued with the cruelty of the prize ring 
and the bravado of the gambling hell; philanthro- 
pists, you who would see the world grow better 



THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH. 77 

and not sink back into filth and barbarism ; Chris- 
tians, you who love the Lord Jesus Christ and the 
children for whom he died ; arouse you all, and 
with one heart and voice let us stem this tide of 
evil literature before it sweeps clean away the 
foundations of morality and religion. 



CHAPTER V. 

TRASH IN IKK. 

Infant Indian Exterminators. Further Wise Words 
from the Business Men. Juvenile Burglaries 
and Flash Papers. One Hundred Thousand Peo- 
ple of Boston Keep Company with Train Wreck- 
ers and Highwaymen. The Cause of this Trash 
in Ink. Cheap Imitation of Burdette and Mark 
Twain. A Waste of Time. A Sum in Arithmetic. 
The Scrappy Mind of the Mere Newspaper Read- 
er. The Young Highwaymen near Boston. The 
Story of the Judge's Son. 

Some time ago a friend sent me a copy of the 
New York Puck, and directed my attention to a 
cartoon on the first page. For the benefit of those 
of you who have not seen this graphic picture let 
me describe it. An infant, apparently some six 
or eight months of age, sits in a cradle, one hand 
grasps a huge bowie-knife, the other a bull-dog re- 
volver, across his knees lies a shot gun, while into 
various crevices of the cradle other knives and 
pistols are thrust. In the infant's mouth is placed 

78 



THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH. 79 

a tube through which he draws nourishment from 
a huge bottle labeled " Dime Novels," " Half Dime 
Stories," u Five Cent Papers," etc. A wild and 
lurid light gleams from the infant's eyes, his tow 
hair stands on end with excitement, a fierce and 
implacable look settles around the corners of his 
mouth. The exciting causes of this preternatural 
ferocity lie scattered about on the floor, labeled, 
6i Buccaneers of the Battery," "Ike the Indian 
Killer," " Bloody Ben," " The Pirates of the Pas- 
saic," etc. In short this " Infant Indian Extermi- 
nator " in the cradle had been nourished on such 
food as made his hair stand on end, and his fin- 
gers naturally clutch the bowie-knife and the re- 
volver. There is a startling truth hidden in this 
grotesque cartoon. The very babies in their 
cradles have this exciting, pernicious trash rained 
upon them. As they draw milk from the nursing 
bottle, they suck in blood and thunder from the 
dime novel. Instead of the " Three Bears," the 
child of today reads about " The Five Skulls." 
Instead of " Dick Whittington and his Cat," he 
reads about u Dick the Destroyer." Instead of 
"- Cinderella and her Golden Slipper," he reads 



80 DANGER SIGNALS. 

about the "The Girl Trailer" or "Wild Nell on 
the Scaffold." The spirit of that cartoon has its 
counterpart in ten thousand households, all our 
country over. It is hardly an exaggeration to 
make the victim of these worthless novels a tow- 
headed baby in his cradle. 

This subject is very closely allied to the one pre- 
sented in the last chapter. Dirt and trash go to- 
gether in literature as well as in the scavenger's 
cart. The dirty is always trashy; the trashy is 
usually dirty. 

In the last chapter were quoted the opinions 
of some of Boston's prominent men of business 
on the kindred subject. I need to add but little 
to this testimony to show you what their advice 
would be. Let me, however, quote a few more 
valuable testimonies. Says one : " I think low lit- 
erature is to the mind what scrofula is to the 
blood. It soon permeates the whole mind, and 
terminates in the malignant cancer which contains 
all the vices man is addicted to." 

Says another : " Young people, given to the habit 
of reading light and trashy novels, dilute their 
minds, destroy the power of concentrated effort, 



THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH. 81 

and make it impossible for them to grasp and con- 
quer that which requires hard and continuous 
study. One can read too much for recreation for 
a time, and then find to his mortification that the 
ability to grasp great truths has departed from 
him, perhaps forever." 

Still another friend of yours, who says that in 
the business in which he has been engaged for 
fifty years he has had the training of a score of 
young men, some of whom have been very suc- 
cessful in life, remarks, that he is sorry to see in 
visiting our public library the unread appearance 
of scientific and historical books, and that, so sel- 
dom are they called for, it is not deemed necessary 
to provide them with the usual paper covers. 

Another gentleman, who has had much to do in 
furnishing you with good reading, writes : '"My 
experience leads me to place Bad Literature first 
among the causes leading to the decline of virtue 
in youth. This poisons the mind and prepares 
the way for dime and other low theatres, intem- 
perance, gambling, and licentiousness." 

You see most of these gentlemen emphasize 
the fact, which we cannot make too prominent, 
4* 



82 DANGER SIGNALS. 

that bad books are the starting-point for other evils. 
" A trashy novel looks innocent," do you say ? "I 
can read it without being any the worse." Ah ! 
but if it is one key that has often unlocked the 
door of perdition for other bright boys and girls 
is it safe to fumble with it in the lock, because 
you think you may and escape where so many 
have entered in and been lost? In this line 
another of your friends sends you the following 
warning : " The prime cause of ruin would be 
the first step taken, as the others would be sure to 
follow. Boys would be more likely to start with 
bad literature than with anything else." 

Let me tell you how I came to have my atten- 
tion directed to this subject. Some time ago, as I 
was walking along one of the streets in the city 
where I then lived, which was most frequented by 
boys and girls, the following advertisement, for 
substance, struck my eye : " All the boys should 
read the wonderful story of the James brothers, 
the desperate outlaws of the Western plains, 
whose strange and thrilling adventures of success- 
ful robbery and murder have never been equalled. 
The account of these brave and daring spirits, 



THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH. 83 

who still defy capture, will interest every boy. 
For sale here. Price five cents." The next morn- 
ing I read the following item in one of the daily 
papers of that city : " Seven boys arrested yester- 
day for burglary ; four stores having been broken 
into by the gang at different times. One of the 
ringleaders who had been in all four of the rob- 
beries is but ten years old." A few days after 
that appeared this item : " Boys made three breaks 
last night stealing goods and money in as many 
different stores." 

I remember, too, the horrible story which Mr. 
Comstock vouches for, of the bloodthirsty band of 
ten year old boys who, excited by such stories, 
bound themselves with an oath to slay their own 
mothers, and were only discovered because the 
heart of one of the little fellows failed him at the 
last moment, and he thought he would practice on 
the servant girl ; and I remember that these in- 
stances are but specimens of a hundred items 
which we may read in the papers every year. 

But to bring the matter very near home. What 
are our boys and girls reading in this year of 
grace ? Much that is useful, much that is health- 



84 DANGER SIGNALS. 

ful, much that will make them good citizens and 
honored men and women, no doubt. I am happy 
to believe that large numbers read only such 
books. But step into any of our news-stores in 
any of our large cities, and a single glance at 
those counters, filled with rubbish, will tell us that 
other large numbers read only such stuff as tends 
to weaken the mind and unnerve the will for hon- 
est endeavor, and to graduate in the end either 
worthless loafers or state's prison convicts. I, for 
one, was totally unaware, until my attention was 
directly called to the subject, how, of late years, 
this crop of worthless print has increased. Even 
a casual glance would amaze many who have not 
studied the subject. Why ! Fathers and Mothers, 
Beadles Dime Novels which, when we were boys 
and girls, were the synonyms for all this class of 
literature, seem to have gone to seed in these latter 
days and a most abundant and pernicious crop has 
sprung up in their stead. The evil genius of our 
childhood has taken to himself more than seven 
and more than seventy-seven spirits worse than 
himself, and all are clamoring for admittance to 
the minds of our children. In a single periodical 



THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH. 85 

store I have counted twenty-one publications of 
this class for our young people alone ; twenty-one 
different flash papers and magazines bearing the 
imprint of different firms, but all bearing the 
trade-mark of the Devil. 

It is impossible to do more than roughly esti- 
mate the number of those who read these publica- 
tions, but, from a careful study of the facts and 
inquiry into the number of these periodicals sold, 
I am convinced that at a very low estimate one- 
third of all the inhabitants of any large city are 
habitual readers of this trash. This is not random 
guess-work. It is founded on careful study and 
estimate. I am convinced that if I should say 
that one-half of our people read this stuff I should 
be easily within bounds. But for the sake of 
being very moderate and conservative I will say 
one-third. Then more than one hundred thou- 
sand men and women and children in this city of 
Cotton Mather and Lyman Beeeher and Charles 
Sumner and Wendell Phillips are today spend- 
ing their time in the company of thieves and mur- 
derers and highwaymen and adulterers, gloating 
over their adventures, revelling in their perilous 



86 DANGER SIGNALS. 

escapes and glorying in their dastardly crimes. 
And the saddest part of all this is that many of 
these readers are young people. At least one-half 
this army belong to this class. At least sixty 
thousand young people in this one city are study- 
ing, not the story of Moses and Joshua and Paul 
and Jesus Christ which, our Sunday-schools teach, 
not the wonderful dealings of God with his people, 
not the deeds of real men in real life, not the 
facts of history which elevate the mind, not the 
truths of science which quicken the intellect, but 
they are studying " The Gypsy Boy's Vengeance " 
or " The Dead Witness " or " Evil Eye, the King 
of the Cattle Thieves." There are more boys and 
girls in every city and town of our land locked 
up every Sunday, (for they get more time as a 
general thing to read this trash on Sunday than 
any other day), with these exciting and pernicious 
stories of unreal and improbable and utterly 
detestable life, than assemble in all our Sunday- 
schools. There are more of our youth who are 
being excited and unstrung and filled with morbid 
fancies by these books than are being strengthened 
and fitted for life by the sweet influences of the 



THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH. 87 

Sabbath day. There are hundreds of thousands 
of our young people who are less fitted to take up 
life's secular duties on Monday on account of what 
they read on Sunday, — the day of rest, in which 
God meant that they should be strengthened and 
made more ready for life's battle. 

The cause of this dire evil is not far to seek. 
It has been growing gradually for many years, 
and the appetite has been fostered by what it has 
fed on. These flash papers whose name today is 
legion may be traced back to one or two more 
decent progenitors which have had great influence 
in shaping the tastes of our youth. They have 
begun by sipping their small beer from these very 
respectable papers and have ended by taking their 
whiskey straight from the rankest and vilest peri- 
odicals of the day. In my opinion the sinners, 
above all others in this direction, are certain re- 
spectable story papers, and for the paradoxical rea- 
son that they have been so good as they have been. 
Have not well-known men of letters and science, 
and eminent divines, even, written for these papers? 
do they not contain many really valuable articles, 
the record of many scientific discoveries ? are not 



88 DANGER SIGNALS. 

many of their contributions of a high order of 
literary merit? Yes, I admit all this, and for 
this very reason they have done so much harm. 
Their very excellencies have glossed over their 
defects and concealed from the eyes of parents 
and teachers the fact that their tendency was in 
the direction of trashy sensationalism. In ten 
thousand cases they have created an appetite they 
could not satisfy, a morbid craving which their 
brethren of lower degree and coarser, more un- 
blushing sensuousness, have satisfied. It is a long 
step from these story papers to the Police Gazette, 
but it is a step which is very often taken. 

In public readings I have been surprised, often- 
times, to notice how even a respectable and intelli- 
gent audience will eagerly listen to the silliest 
nonsense. The real fun found in the Burlington 
Hawkey e and the Detroit Free Press has a thousand 
cheap imitations, and the extent to which our cur- 
rent literature is flooded with these cheap imita- 
tions of Burdette and Mark Twain and Charles 
Dudley Warner would be alarming were the lucu- 
brations not so puerile. The way in which an audi- 
ence will applaud and encore some graphic descrip- 



THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH. 80 

tion of how Mr. Jones chased his hat around a mud 
puddle, or the side-splitting manner in which Mr. 
Brown sat down on a pin, or the too-funny-for- 
any thing way in which one of our Teutonic or 
Hibernian neighbors got drunk and sung a maud- 
lin song in broken dialect, hardly speaks well for 
the intelligence of the audience. In our enter- 
tainments why cannot we have real wit to laugh 
over instead of this sick and silly semblance of 
wit ? Against this kind of trash which is some- 
times forced upon us in otherwise unobjectionable 
entertainments, we are defenceless, perhaps, but I 
am chiefly concerned with the trash which you vol- 
untarily read, and there is another class of books a 
grade higher than the " Gypsy Boy's Vengeance," 
which, while it is more likely to be read by the 
self-respecting young person, is almost equally 
pernicious. These books are found in all our li- 
braries, public and circulating, and I understand 
from those in authority that they constitute the 
great bulk of the books that are taken out. If I 
should look at that volume covered with brown 
paper, my young friend, which you are carrying 
home from the public library, should I not find 



90 DANGER SIGNALS. 

that it was a book by Mrs, South worth or Ouida 
or the Duchess or one of those dozen other authors 
whom I am afraid you know better than I do? 
" Such delicious love stories," you say. " Such 
thrilling situations." Ah yes, but if they received 
their just deserts I think they must be consigned 
to the scavenger's cart with the rest of our trash. 
There is nothing absolutely vicious about many of 
them, but others are really bad and are read by 
respectable people only because their eyes are not 
open to their real tendency. 

The New York Evening Post, quoting from a 
pamphlet which recently appeared criticising the 
books in the Boston Public library, says : " 'Vul- 
gar ' is the mildest epithet applied to this class 
of literature ; 4 maudlin sentiment,' ' nauseous,' 
' fleshly taint,' 'unwholesome,' 'uncleanness,' 'snig- 
gering suggestions,' are the flowers of criticism 
which may be gathered on every page." I do not 
know how far this criticism is true of the books 
in one of the best public libraries in our land, as 
the Boston public library undoubtedly is, but I 
am inclined to think there is a great deal of truth 
in it, and I utter it in order to put you on your 



THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH. 91 

guard against the trash and chaff even in that col- 
lection where you think there is nothing but 
choice wheat. 

In the last chapter I brought some charges 
which seemed to me most serious and weighty 
against the viler class of periodicals ; allow me to 
prefer charges which seem to me no less weighty 
against the trashy literature of which I am speak- 
ing in this chapter. A very serious charge which 
may be brought against this trash is that, to say 
the best of it, reading it involves a sheer waste of 
time. The shortness of human life should pre- 
vent any reasonable young person from touching it. 
Do you remember what Dr. Johnson had engraved 
on the face of his watch? " The night cometh." 
Let us remember that when we take up a book. 
The night cometh. The daylight is too short to 
be wasted upon that which is not worth reading. 
The multiplicity of books repeats this same advice. 
Go with me into the British Museum in London, 
and there a well-nigh innumerable array of books, 
five hundred thousand of them, look down upon 
us from their resting places on the shelves. Let 
us do a little sum in arithmetic. Five hundred 



92 DANGER SIGNALS. 

thousand books before us, little and big, worthy 
and worthless, and there are three hundred and 
sixty-five days in the year. Can you read one of 
them through every day of the year, Sundays and 
all ? If so you can get through the library in one 
thousand three hundred and seventy years, or a 
few days less. Even Methuselah, you see, would 
have needed an extension of time of nearly four 
hundred years to accomplish this task. But you 
cannot read one book a day. Those great folios, 
those huge black-letter volumes, make any such 
idea ridiculous. No, if you read one a week you 
will do well, and pretty steadily you will have to 
work to do this. Well then, in nine thousand four 
hundred and ninety years you will have finished 
the last book in that collection. That is, if you 
read until the inhabited world is once and a half 
as old again as it is at present, until Adam has 
been dead fifteen thousand years instead of six 
thousand, you will have finished the collection, — 
provided no new books are added. But new 
books will be added at the rate of at least three 
thousand a year at a very low estimate, and if 
even this rate of increase keeps up during the 



THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH. 93 

nine thousand odd years you are at work on the 
original library, you will at the end of that time 
be twenty-eight million five hundred thousand 
books in arrears, or enough to occupy you some 
five hundred thousand years more. I will not 
appall you by carrying our sum in arithmetic any 
farther. It has accomplished its purpose, if it has 
shown us that in these days, when it is so pre- 
eminently true that of making many books there 
is no end, we must make a strict and rigid 
choice in that which we read. 

When you have the whole world of books to 
choose from, will you take the very poorest and 
cheapest ? When you may live with Shakespeare 
and Milton and Macaulay and Scott will you 
choose Buckskin Burke and Moccasin Mat and 
Evil Eye the King of the Cattle Thieves for com- 
panions ? When you wish to laugh will you choose 
the sloppy wit of some third rate or thirteenth 
rate imitator, when you might have the genuine 
hum or of Tom Hood or Charles Lamb or Leigh 
Hunt or Charles Dickens ? Will you choose to 
spend an evening with a drunken cut-throat when 
for the same price you might have the company of 



94 DANGEB, SIGNALS. 

the greatest men who ever wrote or sung ? " Stu- 
pidity or commonplace," says one, "is tolerable 
only when no better can be had ; like bread of moss 
or sawdust that needs a famine to get it down, 
except with simpletons who will eat anything." 
"To read in these days is like standing in an or- 
chard laden with fruit ; it is not a matter of choice 
but of falling too and eating the best. The worm- 
eaten, the wind-blasted and the rotten will of 
course be passed by, by any sensible man who real- 
izes the value of his time." 

Again this trash in ink not only wastes the time 
but it renders the mind of him who indulges in it 
scrappy and unable to grasp solid truth. This 
charge applies to much of the unobjectionable 
reading of the day, with what double force then 
does it apply to the worse than worthless stories of 
which I have been speaking. He who attempts 
to read everything will know nothing. 

In that thought lies the bane of the multiplicity 
of newspapers and magazines of these latter days. 
And let me here file a caveat against too much 
newspaper reading. We can resist the temptation 
of reading many books, for books are oftentimes 



THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH. 95 

expensive luxuries, but to the ubiquitous newspa- 
per there is no such let or hindrance. It touches 
upon every subject and exhausts none. The 
name of the newspaper readers of our day is legion. 
I mean the exclusive newspaper readers, who 
hardly know how a bound volume feels in their 
hands. Such people read a little of everything 
and very little of anything. Their minds become 
as scrappy as their reading, until at last they can 
fix their attention upon nothing which is not 
dressed in displayed lines, or which is longer than 
a cable dispatch. Some one has compared the 
mind of a man who reads in this way, to a 
boy's pocket. First the boy pulls out a marble, 
and then a bit of string, and then a toothless 
comb, and then a peanut, and then a shingle- 
nail, and then a jackstone, and then a rusty screw, 
and then a piece of an apple, and then a bit of 
candy, until the bottom is reached. The pocket 
is full to be sure, but it is full of scrappy trash. 
So is the mind of him who contents himself with 
the lightest kind of reading. He has a fact here 
and a fact there, something curious about alliga- 
tors in this corner and a receipt for making apple 



96 DANGER SIGNALS. 

pie in that ; a vague impression that Bismark is 
ruling Germanj" with a high hand, and one of 
Spoopendyke's quarrels with his wife in the same 
part of his cranium. He knows that there has 
been trouble between England and Russia, though 
he hardly knows what it is all about, and he also 
has a vague impression that Lydia E. Pinkham 
cures all diseases. Such is the typical newspaper 
reader. As for me, give me the trash the boy 
carries in his pocket rather than the trash such a 
one carries in his head. "Marshall thy notions 
into a handsome method," quaintly says old 
Thomas Fuller. " One will carry twice more 
weight, trussed and packed, than when it lies 
untoward, flapping, and hanging about the 
shoulders." 

But there are even more serious counts than 
waste of time and dissipation of moral and intel- 
lectual energy which I have to bring against this 
worthless reading. Its direct tendency is, like the 
vile reading before alluded to, toward a worthless, 
vicious life. This tendency is too palpable to need 
extended illustration. I have hinted at it already 
and we can hardly take up a public print without 



THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH. 97 

having our previous knowledge of the evils of 
this class of literature extended and confirmed. 
Let me mention one or two facts which have re- 
cently come to my knowledge. In a country 
town about thirty miles from Boston it was found 
recently that many of the boys, incited by these 
stories, had formed themselves into gangs, after 
the manner of their favorite desperados. They 
would hold secret meetings in old barns or, pref- 
erably, in some cave, if they could find one, as 
being more romantic. They had their signs and- 
passwords and flash names for robbery and murder 
and plunder, and burglar's tools, just as they had 
read in their favorite story papers. And, had they 
not been accidentally discovered and broken up, 
actual robbery and murder would undoubtedly 
have brought disgrace and sorrow to a score of 
families in that pleasant village. I have heard 
the master of one of our largest schools in Boston 
say that he has discovered and broken up similar 
plots among his own boys, and that one of these 
plots contemplated violence upon his own life, 
though personally he believed that the boys would 
all love him as he loved them, were they not ex- 
5 



98 DANGER SIGNALS. 

cited by the mock heroics of these bloodthirsty 
books. 

How these novels corrupt and ruin a life of 
bright promise is vividly illustrated in a true tale 
which appeared some time ago in one of our relig- 
ious papers, but which is worth reproducing because 
it presents a Living example of the degradation and 
infamy to which this miserable fiction leads. It 
does not land all its victims in the same abyss, 
perhaps, but it faces them all and starts them all 
in the same direction. The story is briefly this : 
A lady in one of our southern cities had her atten- 
tion arrested one day by a ragged and half drunken 
boy of about seventeen, who was declaiming for 
the amusement of a crowd of drunken loafers, 
from the English and Latin classics, urged on to 
this exhibition of his powers by the promise of 
" two big drinks." 

An undefinable air of refinement, in spite of 
his profane and drunken conduct, attracted the 
ladj^'s attention, and his pure pronunciation and 
admirable declamation caused her to stop and lis- 
ten. While she was listening a dispute arose, a 
fight ensued, and the boy was arrested and taken 



THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH. 99 

to jail, where it was discovered that he had re- 
ceived internal and fatal injuries in the melee. 
The lady interested herself in him, found that he 
was the son of a rich judge in Mississippi, that 
he had run away from home a year ago, and now 
he was dying, a drunken vagabond in jail. We 
will let him tell the causes which brought him 
there in his own words. 

"Were your parents unkind to you that you 
left them ? " said his benefactress. " Unkind," 
he repeated with a sob. " Oh, I wish I could 
remember a single harsh or unkind word from 
them ! That would be a little excuse, you know. 
No, they were only too indulgent. I was a little 
wild then, and I 've heard father say, after I 'd 
sowed my wild oats I 'd come out all right." " I 
can't understand why you left good parents and 
home," said the lady. " Wait a minute, I 'm coming 
to that. I 'm almost ashamed to tell it, it sounds 
so silly. You see I had been reading a great many 
stories of adventure. I bought every new volume 
as it was issued. My parents did not disapprove 
of these books and did not question me in regard 
to them. They did not suspect how tired I was 



100 DANGER SIGNALS. 

growing of my dull life, and how I longed to imi- 
tate some of my plucky young heroes. I thought, 
as soon as I was free, adventure would pile in 
upon me." "I interrupted him," says the lady, 
" How is it possible that you, whose education had 
been so carefully carried on, who can even appre- 
ciate the beauties of classical literature, could be 
influenced by such trash?" "I don't know," he 
answered, " but I was. Perhaps I really did n't 
what you call appreciate better things, but just 
learned them by rote because I liked the sound. 
They did n't seem to belong to mj real life, but 
these stories did. They were boys like myself who 
did these wonderful things and were so reckless 
and brave, and they lived in a world like ours." 

Thus this boy died ; but seventeen years of age, 
carefully reared, lovingly nurtured, but he died 
an outcast, a drunkard, a tramp in jail, and his 
last words to this lady who had been his only friend 
were : " Warn, warn all young people whom you 
know to let these foolish books alone. They are 
very silly, but they do harm to many and they 've 
ruined me. They take you one step on the bad 
road and the rest comes easy." * 

*Fom The Congregationalist. 



THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH. 101 

And now the old question returns : What are 
you going to do about it ? Young people, what 
are you going to do about it? Will you let this 
Octopus, when he is plainly pointed out to you, 
twist his slimy arms about you, until your minds 
are besotted and your wills weakened, and he has 
you completely in his power ? Parents, what are 
you going to do about it ? You would not allow 
a prize fight or a bull fight to take place within 
the limits of your municipality, if you could help 
it. Why should you allow scenes of greater cru- 
elty and shamelessness to be exhibited to our boys 
and girls every day without a protest ? You would 
not allow " Leadville Luke " or " Rattling Rube " 
to ride through these streets, shooting and robbing 
to their heart's content. Why should you allow 
them, decked in all the pleasing colors of romance, 
to roam through the imaginations of your children ? 
Leadville Luke running amuck seven times in a 
week through these streets would not do as much 
harm as he and his class accomplish in the minds 
of our young people. 

If the people of the land would arise in their 
might, if public sentiment would back up the law, 



102 DANGER SIGNALS. 

this gigantic evil would be quickly disposed of. 
" There is no evil, the power of which is stronger 
than the people," is the noble utterance of the 
governor of one of our western states. Of this 
wrong thing these words are true. Prevalent as 
it is, insidious as it is, it is not stronger than the 
power of the people. 

Then let us all, young men and fathers, maidens 
and mothers, by our influence and example, by 
words of warning and prayers for help, by form- 
ing and molding public sentiment aright, by coun- 
teracting evil with good, do our share in unmask- 
ng and silencing this battery of the Evil One. 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE LOW THEATER. 

The General "Theater Question" not Discussed. 
Warnings from the Business Men. The Murder- 
er's Starting-Point. The Peril to Purity of 
Character. The Low Theater Always Caters 
to Lust. Three Theater Bills. The Rum Shop 
Next Door. Jesse James Plays and their 
"Strong Situations." The Low Theater At- 
tempts to Make Black Appear White and Con- 
fuses Moral Distinctions. The True Picture of 
Yice. 

I do not propose to discuss the " Theater Ques- 
tion" in this chapter. That is a broad subject 
whose discussion is rarely profitable except in 
private conversation with those who are conscien- 
tiously troubled by the matter. By every one who 
has reached years of discretion this question, like 
others of Christian ethics, card-playing, dancing, 
etc., must be settled for himself. Ask a few ques- 
tions like this of yourself. " Can I serve my God 
as well if I go to the theater as if I stay away ? 

103 



104 DANGER SIGNALS. 

can I help those who see me there ? can I build 
up my own character in the best manner ? can I 
ask God's blessing upon me there ? " If your answer 
to these questions is an unhesitating " yes," then 
go. If it is a doubtful or hesitating " yes," or an 
unqualified " no," then stay away. Never offend 
conscience in any of these matters. You are put- 
ting out the eye of the soul when, for the sake of 
present gratification, you are doing that which 
you think may be wrong. The apostle's old rule 
about the unclean meat applies here. " He that 
doubteth is damned if he eat." 

But I am not discussing the general subject of 
the theater. There is a phase of the s abject which 
is often overlooked, but which sadly needs thought 
and prayer and careful attention from all true 
men. There are certain plague spots, called thea- 
ters, before which I must wave the danger signal. 
As the red flag waves from the pest-house to warn 
people of their danger in passing or entering, so 
the only appropriate banner for these play-houses 
is the red flag of warning. Indiscriminate de- 
nunciation of all theaters has sometimes over- 
leaped itself, concealed from the eyes of the Chris- 



THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH. 105 

tian public the fact that there are festering places, 
called theaters, in every large city, which bear the 
same relation to other theaters that adulterated, 
poisoned "tanglefoot" bears to pure wines and 
liquors. I have not been to these places myself, 
and I know that when I make this confession some 
will say, " Then you are talking of something you 
know nothing about. Your testimony must be 
ruled out of court." But softly, my friends. One 
does not need to go into a small-pox hospital to 
. know that small-pox is a horrible disease ; the tes- 
timony of others, the scars and pits of those who 
have been there, and one's own common sense, 
will keep him out of such a place, and yet not 
leave him ignorant of the loathsome malady. The 
experience of others, the scarred lives of those 
who have frequented such places, the indecent 
posters with which these places advertise them- 
selves upon every dead wall, all tell me what they 
are, and tell me to wave the danger signal before 
your eyes. In order to tell you that it is danger- 
ous business to fall off a wharf into deep water I 
need not go and fall off first myself. 

But, as in previous chapters, let me first give 
5* 



106 DANGER SIGNALS. 

the boys the messages which some of their friends 
have sent them, through me. Says one : " A loose 
play, a suggestive play, carries impure thoughts and 
desires with it, — it degrades instead of elevates. 
No young man can afford either money, time, or 
reputation in this direction. " Another sends me 
a strong arraignment, which he clips from his daily 
paper, of " bill-boards, flaunting in the face of day, 
and the eyes of every passer-by, advertisements 
of blonde burlesque or opera-bouffe troupes, too 
indecent and too shocking to be tolerated in any 
community that considers itself enrolled under 
the banner of Christianity." Another classes low 
theaters with bad literature and promiscuous dan- 
ces, and thinks that they all lead on to gambling, li- 
centiousness, and intemperance. "Low theaters," 
says still another, " are about as bad as they well 
can be." Another writes : " I was in the habit of 
attending the theater mostly for the music, of which 
I was very fond, and let me tell you, boys, there 
is nothing but harm in them. The play on the 
boards is all right, perhaps, but the afterpiece and 
the company that attends are full of dangers. 
Break away from these places, or, rather, never 



THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH. 107 

begin to go to them." Still another writes: 
" Young people should avoid these places entirely. 
The habit of attending them, if once formed, 
often leads to dishonesty. I have known many 
young men from good families who went into 
stores with good prospects, but other young men 
in business persuaded them to go to low thea- 
ters, as the first evil step. Being ambitious to 
appear as smart as their companions and not 
having the means for such indulgence of their 
own, they purloined from their employers, were 
detected and disgraced." Here is a sad story which 
tells how one fair, young life went to pieces on 
this shoal. 

"About twenty years ago," says one whose 
name is well known throughout Boston, "there 
came to my store, bringing letters of recommenda- 
tion from a firm in Vermont, as bright and hand- 
some a boy as I have ever seen. His face was as 
fair as that of a girl. His whole appearance was 
captivating. We engaged him as boy in the store. 
He won favor with all. After a few months I dis- 
covered that some of his evenings were spent at 
the theater and other places of amusement. I 



108 DANGEK SIGNALS. 

warned him kindly of the results likely to follow. 
He confessed it to be unwise and promised to shun 
them. A few weeks later he again yielded to the 
enticer and went a step lower in the way of evil. 
Again I warned him, pleaded with him, prayed for 
him, and begged him in the name of and for the 
sake of his sainted mother to resist such tempta- 
tions, and again told him that the end was death. 
With many tears he promised to reform. Not 
long after, he left us, married a young and beauti- 
ful girl. I then said, 'You now have a double 
motive for right living.' He promised that his life 
should henceforth be upright. But appetite was 
strong, and will was weak. His wife had money, 
and wine could be had in place of cheaper drinks. 
He went into business, failed, and, step by step, 
sunk down lower and lower in the scale. He 
became a drunkard, and in the frenzy of madness 
toward his wife, who had left him on account of 
his brutality, he drew a pistol and shot her dead. 
Three years ago, or thereabouts, this young and 
beautiful boy, grown into a murderer, finished 
his course on the gallows at the state's prison in 
Vermont." 



THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH. 109 

But now let us reason about this matter calmly 
and rationally. Let me talk with you, young 
friends, as though we were sitting together in 
your parlor and talking over these matters confi- 
dentially, and will you not deal honestly with 
yourselves? You know something about these 
places, I am afraid. At least you know what the 
staring bill-boards say. Do you not think that 
there is a peril there to purity of character ? I do 
not believe that any of you have got so far that 
you despise purity of character and laugh at femi- 
nine modesty. I do not believe that any of you 
have sunk so low that you have forgotten how to 
blush. I pity you if you have. Would you not 
hang your head in shame if you saw your mother 
or your sister attired as some of those whom you 
go to see at the low theater are attired ? " Yet 
you propose," says Dr. Cuyler, "to pay your 
money (through the box-office) to somebody else's 
sister and daughter to violate womanly delicacy 
for your entertainment. If ' the daughter of He- 
eodias ' dances to please you, then you are respon- 
sible for the dance, both in its influence on the 
dancer and on vour own moral sense. Your eves 



110 DANGEB, SIGNALS. 

and ears," he goes on to say, " are windows and 
doors to the heart. What enters once never goes 
out. Photographs taken on the memory are not 
easily effaced or burned up ; they stick there and 
often become tempters and tormenters for a life- 
time. ' I 'd give my right hand,' said a Christian 
to me once, 'if I could rub out the abominable 
things that I put into my mind when I was a fast 
young man.' He could not do it ; neither will you 
be able to efface the lascivious images or the impure 
words which the stage may photograph on your 
soul." Let us, I say, be honest with ourselves. 
Have you ever attended one of these low shows 
but there has been something about it to pander 
to lustful desires and appetites ? 

A great deal is said about elevating the tone of 
the stage. I do not despair of that being done. 
I sincerely hope that it may be done and that one 
of these days it may take its place with the acad- 
emy and the church as one of the teachers of a 
pure, exalted morality. If we could remove this 
mighty moral influence from the Devil's clutches, 
a great stride in the regeneration of the world 
would be taken. But it does not look as though 



THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH. Ill 

the tendency was in that direction. As I walked 
out the other day I took especial notice of a large 
bill-board which always greets our eyes as we go 
down town. On that board three plays were ad- 
vertised. One was called a musical farce and ex- 
travaganza, if I remember right, and the chief 
figure which struck the eye upon it was a hide- 
ously bruised and bloated individual, with a bristly 
beard, and his head covered with patches of court 
plaster, and otherwise deformed to the full extent 
of the bill printer's power. If such an individual 
presented himself at our doors he would frighten 
the ladies, and receive a polite invitation from the 
gentlemen to descend the steps, until he could 
make himself presentable. The next bill on the 
same board represented a scene in a parlor, where 
one man is reeling backwards from the effects of 
a shot, from a smoking pistol in the hands of 
another man, while the legend underneath the pic- 
ture, referring, evidently, to the shooting scene, 
reads, u Take that, you fool." On this same board 
is still another placard advertising a dramatization 
of Peck's Bad Boy, one of the worst books that 
has been issued during this generation. It is the 



112 DAGGER SIGNALS. 

quintessence of disrespect of parents, vile sugges- 
tiveness, and coarsest kind of low wit. I would 
rather a poison adder should wriggle into my chil- 
dren's nursery, than that such a book should find 
a spot in their hearts ; and yet it is the dramatiza- 
tion of such a book that this poster invites all 
the children to witness. Such is the choice 
selection of announcements borne by one bill- 
board on a single clay ; and the theaters where 
these plays are enacted do not all belong to the 
"low" class of which I have been speaking. If 
such are the apples of Sodom borne on these so- 
called respectable trees, what sort of fruit do the 
others bear ? 

Another peril of the low theater is its inevitable 
surroundings. I will not speak of the character of 
many of the performers, nor of the company you 
may meet there, but ask you for a moment to think 
of that rum-shop next door. Did you ever see one 
of these establishments without its grog-shop? 
Like the Siamese twins they always go together. 
Chang and Eng are never separated. If you have 
too much self-respect to go out between the acts 
"to see a man" or to get some "cloves," there is 



THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH. 113 

the free lunch counter and bar-room, brightly- 
lighted and attractive, standing open, when you 
come out late at night, tired and thirsty. If a 
man is known by the company he keeps, is not an 
institution known in the same way, and is not the 
low theater always known by the grog-shop that 
nestles under its shadow ? 

" It is a prevalent habit with young people who 
attend the theater," says one who has written 
wisely upon this subject, " to remain until a late 
hour amid the excitements of the plays and then 
finish off with a midnight lunch, or a wine supper, 
at some neighboring restaurant. To this practice 
a young lady of my acquaintance owed her down- 
fall. Long after sensible people have laid their 
heads upon their pillows, the frequenters of the 
theater are apt to be adding a second scene of dis- 
sipation to the first." This writer puts it very 
mildly when he says, " It must be pretty hard 
work for a Christian to finish up such an even- 
ing's experience, with an honest prayer for God's 
blessing. That is indeed a poor business and a 
poor pleasure on which we cannot with a clear 
conscience ask our Heavenly Father's approval." 



114 DANGER SIGNALS. 

But there is still another peril connected with 
these low places of amusement, which I would 
dwell upon for a few minutes. This is the unnat- 
ural and impossible views of life which these 
theaters present. In this respect the bad book and 
the bad play exert very much the same influence, 
except that the play, from its very nature, is more 
alluring and fascinating. Our lives are very much 
as are our early dreams of life. If we start with 
noble ideals the lives will pretty certainly be 
noble. If the ideals are degraded the lives will 
pretty certainly be degraded. There is a type of 
play very popular, just now, which tends to con- 
fuse all moral distinctions, and make black appear 
white, and white black ; which sets before our 
young people, as their ideal of manhood, the out- 
law of the plains. That evil is in the same class 
as the flashy, blood-and-thunder novel, and is 
even more alluring, since it decks out with scenery 
and paint and action, and places behind the foot- 
lights, that which the bad book can only represent 
with cold type and printer's ink. I have fre- 
quently seen upon our bill-boards, just such shows 
advertised and they are never long absent from 



THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH. 115 

any large city. A friend recently sent me an ac- 
count of such a show, which was recently wit- 
nessed in St. Louis by forty thousand people. 
Such is the kind of Sunday show which is set 
before the young people of a western city. 

If there is anything that is particularly harmful 
to the average American boy it is just such repre- 
sentations of exciting crime. Our boys are high- 
strung, nervous, excitable, like the rest of our 
people. It is like bringing a spark to a mass of 
tow to emblazon our walls with these pictures, 
and parade our streets with music and painted 
Indians, and then to go through with the mock- 
fights and murders and robberies in our places of 
public amusement. The phlegmatic Dutchman or 
the stolid Indian might stand such scenes and not 
be much harmed, but the young American, all 
nerves and imagination and enthusiasm, to him it 
is often like the intoxicating cup to see such 
things. If Buffalo Bill or Jesse James gets a 
secure lodging-place in these young minds, I see 
no chance there for the example of Jesus Christ 
or the words of St. Paul to take root. As well 
might you sow wheat in a field completely covered 



116 DANGEB, SIGNALS. 

with Canada thistles and expect to reap an abun- 
dant harvest. First root out the thistles, then 
sow the wheat. Let us try to pull up the thorns 
that the good seed may have a chance to grow. 
It is but following our Lord's example. He drove 
out the money-changers from the temple, as well 
as proclaimed in the temple the way of life. He 
pronounced a woe upon the proud as well as a 
beatitude upon the meek. 

I will not attempt to describe the highly wrought 
sensationalism of these plays, but simply give a 
quiet, evidently truthful newspaper account which 
describes one of these typical dramas. " The sen- 
sational play, recounting the deeds of the famous 
Missouri bandit, Jesse James, drew a large up- 
stairs audience last night. The play proved to be 
all that its patrons could desire. They went to 
see murders, robberies, fights, and other such pleas- 
ant little pastimes, and they were satisfied to their 
heart's content. All the strong situations with 
which the piece abounded, were received with 
demonstrations of delight." A " strong situation," 
I suppose, consists in a peculiarly dastardly 
robbery or an unusually blood-curdling murder. 



THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH. 117 

These horrors have been received with " demon- 
strations of delight " by New England audiences, 
by audiences in which were some of our boys and 
girls, by men and women upon whom have been 
turned all their lives the electric light of nineteen 
centuries of civilization and Christianity. " The 
play," continues this newspaper account, " con- 
sists of a series of scenes and incidents in the 
lives of Jesse and Frank James. The first repre- 
sents their happy home [the happy home, I would 
have you notice, of thieves and murderers and 
blacklegs] ; the second, the plains of Kansas ; the 
third, a horse race and a robbery ; the fourth, the 
outlaws on the Missouri river, introducing an en- 
counter between the outlaws and the sheriff; and 
the fifth, the home of Jesse James and his assas- 
sination by the Fords." Though the James Broth- 
ers are passing into deserved oblivion, the type of 
character which they represent is still multiplied 
by these catch-penny shows. 

I do not believe that a civilized community ever 
suffered from an exhibition of more outrageous 
crime. We reprobate and loathe the gladiatorial 
shows in which the old Romans delighted, but 



118 DANGER SIGNALS. 

there was some excuse for those shows. With all 
their cruelty they were exhibitions of muscular 
strength and physical endurance. These shows 
are exhibitions of little besides perfidy and crime. 
The only redeeming feature about them is the 
horses, which, I have no doubt, could they speak, 
would tell us they were ashamed of the company 
they keep. Napoleon was not a man of strict mor- 
als ; he did not govern his people upon Puritanic 
models, by any means, but, from what I know of 
his code of laws, I do not believe he would have 
allowed any such plays within the borders of his 
land. He had had a demonstration of the evils of 
such plays in the great revolution which preceded 
his accession to power. Says Edmund Burke, 
writing of the French Revolution : " While 
courts of justice were thrust out by Jacobin tri- 
bunals, and silent churches were only funeral 
monuments of departed religion, when Paris was 
like a den of outlaws, a lewd tavern for revel and 
debaucheries, there were in that city no fewer 
than twenty-eight theaters, crowded night after 
night. From the theater at night back to butch- 
ery, blasphemy, and debauchery in the day-time. 



THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH. 119 

From butchery, blasphemy, and debauchery in 
the day-time back to the theater at night." In 
our orderly cities we allow what Napoleon Bon- 
aparte would not allow, we allow one of the 
agencies which has always been hand and glove 
with rapine and anarchy. Whatever may be the 
pretext of these plays, or the eloquent denun- 
ciations of crime which are sometimes put into 
the mouths of the despairing outlaw just as he 
dies, their real effect is to make the cut-throat 
not the villain of the plot, but the hero. What- 
ever may be the pretence, his deeds in reality 
are never held up for detestation and scorn. Ac- 
cording to these plays it is a brave thing to rob 
an unprotected stage-coach ! It is a noble deed 
to make families penniless, and wives widows, and 
children orphans, if it is only done out-doors on 
the Kansas plains. The representation of that 
which ought to send the perpetrators to the gal- 
lows is* received with demonstrations of delight 
by an American audience. 

Did you know, my young friends, that the Devil 
has always been at work in this way from the 
time Eve ate the apple, trying to prove that evil 



120 DANGER SIGNALS. 

is good and good is evil? " It will not hurt you," 
he said to the mother of the race. " It is good. 
It will make you wise ; that is the reason God is 
afraid to have you eat it." With Eve's sons and 
daughters, ever since, he has been pursuing the 
same line of argument, and I believe he never 
found a more useful agent to do his bidding than 
when he sent out these theatrical troupes to make 
robbery, and murder, and arson appear brave and 
attractive ; and slow, plodding virtue to appear ■ 
correspondingly tame and unattractive. Suppose 
we should wake up some morning to find all the 
ordinary distinctions which nature makes between 
the harmful and the harmless blotted out. Here is 
a red-hot fire of coals, but it does not look like a 
fire, it looks like a bed of roses, so you take a hand- 
ful and put them in your bosom. Here is a serpent 
with a deadly fang, but it does not look like a ser- 
pent, it looks like a beautiful singing bird, which 
we carry home as a plaything for our children. It 
is a bitter, zero day, but it does not look or feel so, 
and, tempted by the false idea that it is a balmy, 
June-like clay, we venture out, unprotected, and 
meet death in the frostv air. Would it be the 



THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH. 121 

sign of a wise, benevolent Providence thus to con- 
fuse natural objects and signs of danger and make 
the evil in the world appear good and the good 
evil ? Nay, would it not be a proof that a malev- 
olent deity ruled the world? God never thus 
treats' us. Fire burns and we always know that 
it will burn ; deadly serpents sting and we know 
they will sting. Zero weather freezes and we 
know it will always and everywhere freeze. God 
never makes a bed of coals look like a bed of 
roses, or a rattlesnake look like a humming bird. 
But that is just what these miserable dramas of 
successful villainy too often accomplish, by mak- 
ing a murderer into a hero, and a thief into a 
" bandit king." These plays, too, drag into the 
full glow of the calcium light that which God in- 
tended to stifle in the low, dark dens of vice, or to 
hide in the fastnesses of the Western woods. 

God has permitted evil in the world, but he has 
compelled it for the most part to hide its head. It 
goes abroad in the night not in the day-time. It 
recruits its forces in dark cellars. It has its hid- 
ing place in the outlaw's cave, where the light of 
the sun never pierces, and, if we cannot extirpate 
6 



122 DANGEK SIGNALS. 

it, we should not parade it in the brightness of 
day. One great demoralizer of our times is this 
parade of evil. The latest murder is too often 
displayed in head lines, the latest deed of benevo- 
lence is found in nonpareil type at the foot of the 
column. The last scandal is the talk at every 
breakfast-table, the latest proof that Christ's king- 
dom is extending over all the world is never men- 
tioned. These plays of which I am speaking are 
only exaggerated signs of this tendency of our 
times, to drag out into the light the vicious and 
degrading. If we cannot reform the villain,' let 
us at least compel him to hide away and not go 
about dressed in better clothes than honest folks 
can wear. A murderer's life is not happy. A 
robber's home is not an earthly paradise, and it 
never can be until God and Satan change places. 
Satan would be very glad to have you think so. 
He is always trying to make it out so. Don't 
believe him, young people. He tells the young 
tippler there is happiness in the wine cup. Ten 
thousand drunkards give the lie to his words. He 
makes the young girl think that a life bordering 
on the indelicate and the fast is most pleasant. 



THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH. 123 

Ten thousand old ball-room flirts know better. 
He makes the boy believe that the fast young man 
about town has the best time. Ten thousand 
debauchees, worn out with lust before they are 
forty, know, now, how they were deceived in 
believing this. Vice does not contribute to the 
enjoyment of life. Its place is not in a pleasant 
parlor, with a happy wife and children, and with 
pious mottoes over the fireplace. Wickedness 
tends directly to rags, filth, squalor, misery, and 
despair. 

If you really want to see the outcome of vil- 
lainy do not look to see it represented by a Jesse 
James troupe or expect to see it depicted in their 
gaudy posters. Go to the upper end of North 
street in Boston or the slums of New York. 
There is where you see the real results of disobe- 
dience to the laws of God and man. In those rum- 
soaked, blear-eyed, broken-clown men; in those 
brazen-faced, blasphemous women ; in those ragged, 
dirty, half-naked children ; in those filthy alleys ; in 
those dilapidated tenements; in those windows 
stuffed with hats and bundles of rags to keep out 
the winter cold and snow ; in them you will find 



124 DANGER SIGNALS. 

the true picture of the outcome of evil, and it is 
an outrage upon the morals of any community to 
paint it otherwise. Hogarth deserves the thanks 
of the Christian world for painting the steps in a 
drunkard's life as he did; for showing the gradual 
descent from respectability to loathsome and exe- 
crable debauchery. If he had gone the other way 
and represented a rake's progress as pleasant and 
respectable, and on the whole quite enjoyable, he 
would deserve the sternest rebuke of every moral- 
ist, but no more would he deserve it, than do 
those actors who make the outlaw into the gentle- 
man, and surround the thief with the blessings 
which only an honest life can bring. 

My young friends, I pray that none of your 
lives may be wrecked on this rock which I have 
pointed out. I feel indeed that you are in danger 
of being led to call evil good and good evil, if 
you look upon these false and silly representations. 
Have nothing to do with them. In spite of you, 
if you witness them, they will lower your moral 
tone and corrupt the springs of your life. No 
true manhood ever grew out of a boyhood ab- 
sorbQd in such scenes of vice and crime. Christ 



THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH. 125 

will never take up his abode in company with 
thieves and cut-throats. If you have been har- 
boring one of these villains of late in your imagi- 
nation, turn him out, I pray you, before he makes 
you in spirit like himself. Hear the end of the 
woe against those who call evil good and good 
evil, for just this blotting out of moral distinctions 
is what these plays accomplish. " Therefore as 
the fire burnetii up the stubble and the flame 
consumeth the chaff, so their root shall be as rot- 
tenness and their blossom shall go up as dust." 
So, I fear, will it be with you, if you give place in 
your heart to these demons who are trying to 
crowd their way in ; your root of good principle 
will be as rottenness, and the blossom of your 
future promise will go up as dust. Then beware 
of the low, play-house door. " Avoid it, pass not 
by it, turn from it, and pass on." 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE GAMBLING DEH. 

The Little Horses of Interlaken. Base-Ball Pool- 
Kooms. From the Prize Candy Bag to the Rou- 
lette Table. The Beans in a Bottle. The 
Soap Lottery. What the Boston Merchants 
Have to Say. The Butcher Bird of the Com- 
munity. How a Million Dollars a Year Change 
Hands. Revelations of an Old Gambler. The 
Gambler's Prevailing Traits. Cupidity and 
Laziness. Midas' Ears. Good Things always 
Cost. The Devil's Private Way. 

Whoever visits Interlaken goes, of course, 
to the Kursaal, which is one of the chief attrac- 
tions of the place. Here are beautiful gardens 
and flowing fountains, placid little lakes, and 
beds of sweet-scented flowers, while, off in the 
distance, towers, ever, the white-veiled Jungfrau. 
Here in the garden are little parties, sitting about 
small tables, eating and drinking and smoking 
and chatting, but the center of attraction is the 
corner where the petits cheveaux are racing about 
126 



THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH. 127 

their miniature ring. Placards on the walls tell 
you to go and see the " little horses," and when 
you come to them, you find a row of little silver 
steeds on a circular board which the owner sets 
in motion, while an eager crowd all about him, 
young men and women, sedate fathers and 
matrons, grandfathers and grandmothers even, 
are betting their francs on which of those little 
silver images will spin the furthest on the smooth 
board. 

I think that scene is typical of gambling opera- 
tions the world over. The little horses are always 
racing, and racing away with the money of the 
victims. The little horses are always under the 
control of the gambler. He sets them spinning, 
or stops them at his pleasure. Whoever loses, it 
is never the gambler behind- the horses. Who- 
ever wins, it is sure to be, in the long run, the 
gambler behind the horses. To tell you of some 
of these little horses who are likely to run off 
with your money, and good name, and good prin- 
ciples, is my purpose in this chapter. You need 
not go to the Kursaal of Interlaken to find them. 
They are racing about in every city, and I fear 



128 DANGER SIGNALS. 

that on them some of you have already taken 
your first ride in the direction of the bottomless 
pit. A short time since there were over forty 
well-known faro houses in Boston, whose names 
have been given in one of our daily papers, where 
the proprietors and the trustees and the owners 
of the buildings were known. Everybody that 
looked into the matter knew where they were 
except the city authorities, whose duty it was to 
shut them up. 

But I am not so much afraid of these notorious 
gambling dens as I am of the many pool-rooms, 
and poker-rooms, and billiard saloons, where the 
little horses are always racing, and tempting you 
to a ride to death with them. I am told that in 
three pool-rooms of Boston in the year 1884, at 
least one million dollars changed hands, mostly 
during the base-ball season. Do you know what 
that means? It does not mean that our capital- 
ists, our solid men of business, who have money 
to spare, risk and lose their money on the all- 
engrossing question, whether the Bostons will 
beat the Providence nine or not, or whether Gal- 
vin will make a run, or Burdock will score on the 



THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH. 129 

seventh inning of the league game. It would be 
bad enough if such men, who had money to risk, 
lost it ; but these base-ball pool-rooms mean that 
our clerks and school boys and artisans, who have 
no money to spare, are taking losing rides on these 
little silver horses. The great bulk of that mil- 
lion dollars, lost last year, came from just this 
class. You see in the rum-shop windows this pla- 
card in election times : " Election returns received 
here every hour " ; and when the base-ball season 
commences, we see in those same windows : " Base- 
ball returns received here after each inning." 
Look out for those places, boys ! The little silver 
horses are waiting in there to give you a swift 
ride to destruction. It is a shame that our 
national game, about which there is so much that 
is truly admirable in skill and athletic exercise, 
should be prostituted to fill a gambler's till. 

Then there are lotteries in all forms and shapes. 
I wish I might open them to your view in their 
real character, and write over the door of every 
one of them : " Beware, beware ! The little horses 
within here seem to be of silver, but it is silver 
wrung in ten cent pieces from the pockets of the 
6* 



130 DANGER SIGNALS. 

poor man, and every one that takes a ride on tliem 
will be nearer the gates of destruction than when 
he started." Says one of the Judges of the 
supreme court of Kentucky, as quoted by Anthony 
Comstock : " Lottery gambling is the worst spe- 
cies of gaming, because it brings adroitness, cun- 
ning, experience, and skill, to contend against 
ignorance, folly, distress, and desperation. Every 
new loss is an inducement to a new adventure ; 
and, filled with vain hope of recovering what is 
lost, the unthinking victim is led on, from step to 
step, till he finds it impossible to regain his 
ground, and he gradually sinks into a miserable 
outcast, or, by a bold and still more guilty effort, 
plunges at once into that gulf where he hopes for 
protection from the stings of conscience, a refuge 
from the reproaches of the world, and oblivion 
from existence." 

It would be amusing, were it not so sad, to 
observe the ingenuity of the Devil in offering 
our young people a ride on one of the- little silver 
horses of chance. Here is that noble institution, 
the church fair. Of course it is all right, the 
boy or girl thinks, to attend a church fair, and 



THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH. 131 

here in the fair is a guess-cake, or a grab-bag, or 
Pandora's box, or Fortune's well, or some chance 
to invest a dime or a quarter, with the chance of 
drawing an unknown prize. If there is anything 
to be reprobated or despised, it is just this species 
of gambling. 

We do not wonder when we see the gambler's 
table and the rum-shop side by side. They are 
congenial companions. But when the gambler's 
tools and methods are brought into the house of 
God for the ostensible purpose of supporting 
public worship, or some charitable institution, it is 
time for every Christian man to repeat his Mas- 
ter's words : " My house shall be called the house 
of prayer : but ye have made it a den of thieves." 
The church or the charity which cannot live with- 
out grab-bags and guess-cakes, had a thousand 
times better die. 

But the Evil One uses still subtler means than 
the church fair, to incite the love for gaming. 
Here is the little five-year-old, who looks with 
longing eyes at the tempting candy, or toothsome 
pop-corn in the shop window. He begs a couple 
of pennies of papa or mamma, and makes his first 



\ 



132 DANGER SIGNALS. 

investment in a prize candy bag, or pop-corn pack- 
age. He takes his first ride on the silver horse. 
The notion is first started in his little head, that 
perhaps he can get something for nothing, which 
is the idea at the root of all gambling. 

Cleanliness is next to godliness, we are told, 
and soap is essential to cleanliness, and yet, even 
with this most unpromising article, the gambler 
found a way, a year or two ago, to make money. 

"The plan is," says Mr, Comstock, in his 
"Traps for the Young"; "in order to induce 
people to buy their soap, to take advantage of the 
gambling propensities of the day, and to adver- 
tise a lottery or game of chance in connection 
with the soap business. They wrap each cake of 
soap with a printed wrapper. For twenty wrap- 
pers thus brought back, they trade a ticket bear- 
ing a number, and this number represents a share 
or interest in a distribution of presents at some 
future date. Practically these schemes are sops 
thrown to servant girls to encourage extravagance 
and dishonesty. There are wastes and peculations 
enough in the kitchen without offering ' presents,' 
; rewards,' or 'prizes' in this line. There are 



THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH. 133 

enough supplies passed out to poor relations to 
satisfy every housekeeper, as it is, and there is no 
necessity for chromos or prizes in this department. 
These devices practically say to Biddy, ; The 
more soap used, wasted, or otherwise disposed of, 
of this kind, the more tickets in the distribution.' 
Do thinking men and women want a lottery 
started in their kitchen ? " There is another 
means of whipping the Devil around the stump, 
resorted to very frequently, but still, under the 
thin disguise of an exercise of judgment, I can 
see one of the little horses waiting for victims who 
shall mount and ride. Some merchant with an 
unsalable stock will put, perhaps, a bottle of 
beans in his window, and give to any one, who 
buys a suit of his clothes or a pound of his tea or 
coffee, a prize, if he guesses the right number of 
beans. As this affords very little opportunity for 
judgment, but is purely a matter of guess work, 
it is nothing more nor less than a disguised lottery. 
I only speak of these various cheats to remind 
you that the cloven foot may lurk under very 
innocent looking forms, but that the spirit of the 
thing, from the baby's prize candy package to the 



134 DAGGER SIGNALS. 

gambling hell of Monaco, is always the same. But 
I have not, as you know, simply my own wisdom 
or experience to give you in this matter. A score 
of Boston merchants have placed this evil high 
up in the list of your enemies. One of them, 
whom I well know, in whose heart is a warm spot 
for young men, writes: "Among the dangerous 
places to be avoided is the billiard table. I knew 
a young man, some years since doing business in 
Boston, whose prospects were as bright as those of 
any young man I ever saw, whose first step in the 
downward path was billiard playing. I used to see 
him frequently at the door of the billiard saloon. 
Soon he neglected his business, and prosperous 
business soon left him, he contracted other bad 
habits, failed, and died, a miserable wreck, before 
he was forty years old. To be avoided is the 
smoking car, and playing cards in the cars, as well 
as elsewhere. No careful merchant would employ 
a young man who has such habits." 

Says another : " Poker is a fascinating game 
and many a young man quiets conscience by mak- 
ing the limit one cent or half a dime, but the love 
for the game continues, no matter how small the 



THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH. 135 

risk." Another prominent merchant writes you : 
" The desire for the excitement and possible gains 
of the gambling saloon is a very great danger, 
and a most painful personal experience with a 
young man, formerly in the employ of the firm of 
which I am a member, prompts me to suggest a 
temptation which I fear is not appreciated and 
spoken against as it should be. I refer to the 
almost universal pastime of card-playing as prac- 
ticed in the smoking-cars, both on long and short 
trains. As you are aware, thousands of young 
men use these trains in coming to and going from 
the city every day. The smoking-car is furnished 
with card-tables, and actual gambling is not an 
unheard-of experience. The young man to whom 
I have referred came into our employ from a 
Christian home, and had our confidence in a large 
degree. He boarded with his parents seven miles 
out of the city. After a time we noticed a change, 
and later it proved that he had been stealing, had 
then taken nearly a thousand dollars. His own 
explanation was that the desire for gambling was 
developed in the smoking-car and from that he 
went to the saloon and became a thief that he 



136 DANGER SIGNALS. 

might indulge the passion which had grown from 
such small beginnings." 

Another of your friends sends you this terse 
message : " Gambling, an inordinate desire to 
be rich, lotteries, pool-rooms, stocks, and other 
speculations, are fatal fascinations- The example 
of a very few successful speculators has lured 
hundreds of thousands to disgrace and ruin." 
Another large merchant for whom, very likely, 
some of you may work, writes : " I regard pool- 
rooms as most dangerous to the young, and have 
had to fight them on account of their influence 
on young men, some of them mere boys, in my 
own employ. There is a fascination about games 
of chance, hard to account for by those who have 
no taste for such things, and their influence is 
most pernicious." I will quote to you the wise 
words of only one more of your friends in this 
connection. "In these days of monej^ kings and 
fabulous riches, young men become discontented 
with the slow way of getting a competence, and 
their discontent often develops into a mania for 
lottery tickets. I have known young men, strug- 
gling in business, with chances of success waiting 



THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH. 137 

on close application, who have become unsettled 
by this feverish anxiety for a sudden impetus. 
They have lived on expectation from week to 
week, until ; unsuccessful in business,' is written 
over their doors." 

And now, as plainly as I can, let me place 
before you my special reasons for waving this 
danger signal. In the first place, to put the mat- 
ter upon the lowest grounds, you are sure to be 
fleeced, if you have any dealings with the profes- 
sional gambler. The fly, stepping daintily into 
the spider's web, has just as much chance of 
coming out unhurt, as you have, when you enter 
the gambling den. The lamb, venturing into the 
lion's jungle, is as safe as you are, when you open 
the door of the pool-room. The lion and the 
lamb may lie down peacefully together, but, it is 
a very old witticism that tells us which will 
occupy the interior apartment. There is a very 
savage bird that is not uncommon hereabout in 
winter, called the shriek or butcher bird. It 
pounces upon little, unoffending members of the 
feathered tribe, scares the canaries behind our 
windows, devours all the victims it can, and is 



138 DANGER SIGNALS. 

said to spit the rest upon the spike of some thorn 
tree. I do not know any bird of the air that the 
professional gambler so much resembles, as the 
butcher bird. He dashes even into the family 
circle, as the shriek dashes at the glass to secure 
the canary. Is it best then for the other birds to 
enter his very nest, and invite him to strike his 
talons into them? I do not say that you may 
never win a dollar in a pool-room, or a prize in a 
lottery. But I do say, that it is even worse for 
you if you win, than if you lose. I should pray 
that if you ever went into the gambler's den, you 
might lose every time. It is better to lose a few 
feathers, if that will show you the true nature of 
your enemy, than to be lured on until he can 
drive his claws into your heart. 

An old gambler, who signs himself C. D. in the 
Boston papers, and for whose identity the gamb- 
ling fraternity of Boston have offered to give one 
thousand dollars, says, virtually, that he has been 
through it all, has been a recognized leader among 
the gamblers, and he knows that there is no honor 
among this class of thieves. They will not hesi- 
tate to swindle any one whom they can swindle 



THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH. 139 

safely. He says that in each of two pool-rooms 
one thousand one dollar base-ball combination 
pool tickets are sold every day of the base-ball 
season. Beside this the manager has control of 
the telephone and solicits bets of two dollars and 
fifty cents each on the possibility of a score being 
made in each inning as played. A, for instance, 
bets two dollars and fifty cents that no score will 
be made in the first inning of the Boston and 
Providence game. B accepts the bet, and they de- 
posit five dollars in the hands of the management, 
who, for their commission hold back fifty cents. 
Their profits from these commissions alone average 
fifty or seventy -five dollars per day. Moreover, 
having control of the telephone, they can learn 
before their victims the results of each inning, 
thus putting their confederates up to bet always 
on the winning side. Has the fly any more chance 
in the spider's house than you have in the gamb- 
ler's house ? We can form some estimate of the 
number of victims of this evil when we remember 
what Mr. Comstock tells us, that in one office of 
the Louisiana lottery in New York City, which 
has been advertised in many papers, calling them- 



140 DANGER SIGNALS. 

selves respectable, throughout the country, the 
average receipts for twentj^ days prior to a raid 
which he made upon them, were five thousand 
one hundred and seventy-six dollars per day by 
actual count, while the average daily orders and 
letters received were one thousand seven hundred 
and fifty. " I saw, at one time,'' he says, " deliv- 
ered to one clerk, from this office, at the New 
York post-office, over five hundred and fifty reg- 
istered letters. The annual income of this com- 
pany alone, according to their own showing is 
four million dollars." 

How many little birds killed and spitted by this 
detestable shriek do these thousands of letters indi- 
cate? But I would put this matter upon higher 
ground. If it was only a matter of your losing 
a few dollars or a few hundred dollars it would 
not be worth while perhaps to take the time to 
utter this warning. But ah! character is involved 
in this loss. You can win back the money you 
lose by persistent toil, or fortunate business invest- 
ments, perhaps, but you cannot win back the 
character you lose so easily. 

Character is a plant of slow growth, and he 



THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH. 141 

who hacks at this tree destroys what years cannot 
replace. Says the reformed gambler, whom I 
have before quoted : " Gambling, being illegiti- 
mate, and ostracized by society, is only adopted 
as a business by men dead to a moral sense of 
right and wrong. A careful analysis of my own 
case and that of my colleagues has confirmed me 
in the belief that the two chief components 
which go to make up the professional gambler are 
cupidity and laziness." These also, I believe, are 
the motives which lead the foolish flies to venture 
within the gambler's web, — cupidity and laziness. 
A desire to get something for nothing, a desire 
for an, easy life, for a soft cushion, for a sinecure 
office, for a fat place, with little work about it. 
This is the demoralizing spirit which honeycombs 
character, which eats the pith out of every manly 
life, which fills the policy rooms, and lines the 
pockets of the gambler. How many of our young 
men are drifting about from place to place, look- 
ing for the easy spot ; dissatisfied with this, 
because the work is hard, and with that, because 
the hours are long, and with the other place 
because the pay is small, unwilling to do their 



142 DANGER SIGNALS. 

honest best because of some fancied grievance of 
work or pay ; unwilling to do a stroke of work 
that they can live without doing, always waiting, 
like Mr. Micawber, for something to turn up, that 
shall furnish a snug berth and demand no equiva- 
lent of muscle or skill or brain. That is the 
gambler's spirit, whether you ever risked a cent 
or handled a cue in your life. That is the 
spirit which demoralizes and degrades, and opens 
the door at last of every gambling hell. Cupidity 
and laziness are the two elements of the gam- 
bler's character. Sweep them away, and our 
gambling dens would be closed to-morrow. 
Beware of them both. They are soul poisoners. 
Whenever you are tempted to wish for money 
without working for it, think of the story of 
Midas. That was just what he desired, you 
know, and the gods granted his request, and 
everything that he touched turned into gold. But 
he found this exceedingly inconvenient, for even 
his food turned into the bright, yellow metal, and 
he could not eat it. Midas, moreover, had the 
ears of an ass given him by the gods. He con- 
trived to conceal them under his Phrygian cap for 



THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH. 143 

a time, but the servant who cut his hair discovered 
them. The secret so much troubled him, for he 
could confide it to no human being, that he dug a 
hole in the ground and whispered into it, " King 
Midas has ass's ears." He then filled up the hole 
and felt relieved, for he thought the secret was 
buried. But on the same spot a reed grew which, 
as it waved in the wind, whispered his secret, 
" King Midas has ass's ears," and so betrayed him 
again. Look close enough and you will find that 
all those who seek for money without working for 
it have the same deformity. Scan the crowds in 
the gambling den. They are all alike in this 
respect. They all have ass's ears. No Phrygian 
cap can conceal them. Their laziness, too, is as 
great as their cupidity. "The down-right lazy 
man," says Geikie, " is commonly as mean as he is 
shiftless, willing to take without giving any equiv- 
alent ; if he must work he does as little as possi- 
ble ; he talks longer about doing, than it takes 
others to act. His life might be spent in the 
circumlocution office, for it is a long study of 
6 how not to do it.' As Gibbon puts it, 6 He well 
remembers he has a salary to receive and only 



144 DANGER SIGNALS. 

forgets that he has a duty to perform.'" "In 
the way of writing," says Carlyle, " no great thing 
was ever or will ever be done with ease, but with 
difficulty. Is it with ease that a man shall do his 
best in any shape ? Not so. Goethe tells us he 
' had nothing sent him in his sleep, no page of his 
but he knew well where it came from.' " 

Would that I could impress upon you, my 
young friends, this one truth : " Good things 
always cost." For if, in all the fullness of its 
meaning, this one thing could be made plain, 
no one of you would ever darken the door of a 
gambling saloon again. " Good things always cost." 
I do not mean to say that money was never won 
at a roulette table or from a faro bank or a lottery 
wheel. It has been thus won, but money thus 
w r on was never a good thing. I do not mean to 
say that political honor was never bestowed where 
it was not deserved or earned. It has been thus 
bestowed, but such honor was never a good thing. 
" Great men are hard-working men," it has been 
well said. " Genius means a great capacity for 
work. Genius will work. The men eminent in 
all the noble walks of life have been, and are now, 



THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH. 145 

great workers. They are trained to endure, and, 
when occasion requires, can, and do, labor tremen- 
dously. Are you dazzled by the lives of generals, 
senators, millionaires, or great men of letters? 
Consider the cross, ere looking at the crown. It 
is a grand thing to win the crown. Try for it. 
Try with all the manhood there is in you. You 
are worth little if you do not make the trial. Let 
no word of mine discourage you. But try no 
short cuts. Count the cost and then do valiant 
battle. Determine to win all these good things but 
win them legitimately." This weakening of the 
moral fibre resulting from cupidity and laziness, 
fostered by the gambling den, works out its legit- 
imate results in defalcation, forgery, embezzle- 
ment. The papers are full of stories of dreadful 
falls from high places. Our ears are stunned and 
our hearts grow sick, but it is the gambling spirit 
of the age that will account for every one of them. 
" Pool-rooms are the most demoralizing of all 
kinds of gambling," says the old gamester I have 
already quoted. " The defalcations, the direct 
cause of pool gambling, are usually first offences, 
and are condoned without publicity, but justice 
7 



146 DANGER SIGNALS. 

overtakes the thief at last. Every pool gambler 
knows his victims, and in the slang of the trade 
says, ' So and so will come a " header " for " dip- 
ping " too often in the well.' I know a case in 
point. There was a young fellow in one of our 
large crockery houses whose fall was predicted in 
a pool-room two weeks before it occurred." I 
have in my possession the account of scores, who, 
in the expressive language of the gambler, have 
come just such headers from decency, respectabil- 
ity and honor, to shame and degradation and ever- 
lasting contempt. And what is the meaning of 
that large American colony in Canada except that 
its members gambled too long in wheat or flour 
or bank stocks or mining shares, until at last the 
long embezzlement came to light, and they had 
to flee their country, leaving only a dishonored 
name behind. 

Am I writing to any one who has taken the 
first step on this road, who has begun with penny 
ante, or taken a ten cent play in a policy shop, or 
a single dollar combination in a base-ball pool? 
Let me say to you, most solemnly, that, at the end 
of this road is the county jail or the state's prison, 



THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH* 147 

with grated windows and bolted doors. At the 
end is sorrow and shame and a blasted life. The 
road which you have begun to travel is strewn 
with the carcasses of men who are dead while 
they live, dead to everything that is good, to their 
families, their homes, their loves, their hopes. 
This road is worn smooth by the feet of forgers, 
defaulters, and thieves. Let me put up a sign- 
board which all may read as they come in their 
life's journey to this by-path which leads to the 
gambling den. 

On this sign-board shall be printed in large 
letters, 



THE DEVIL'S PRIVATE WAY, 

DANGEROUS PASSING. 

Whoever takes this road, does so at J 
his own risk. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE LEPER OF IMPUEITY. 

The Dreaded Leper of Ancient Times. The more 
Loathsome Leper of Modern Times. What the 
Merchants Think of Him. Insanity or Suicide. 
The Three Doors by which this Leper Enters 
the Heart. Imagination-Door. Dr. Holland's 
Words of Wisdom. Eye-Door and Ear-Door. A 
Word to Young Women. Keep Safe the Jewel. 
Balls and Skating Rinks. A Dancing-Master's 
Opinion. Out-Door Sports. The Unspeakable 
Turk. The Leper's End. 

In some respects the subject which forms the 
caption of this chapter is the most difficult of all 
to treat. It is seldom alluded to in public, the 
literature of the subject is very scanty, and every 
writer hesitates to speak of that of which, never- 
theless, his conscience tells him he ought to speak, 
when writing upon such a subject as the Enemies 
of Youth. 

Of all the diseases that afflicted the ancient 
world leprosy was the most dreadful and the most 
148 



THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH. 149 

dreaded. The leper was loathed and driven out 
from all companionship, except with those who 
were diseased like himself. If he ever entered 
the synagogue he was railed in from the rest of 
the congregation and must enter before and depart 
after the rest of the worshipers. As the disease 
increased in violence he was more and more iso- 
lated. When he approached a fellow creature the 
law obliged him to throw dust in the air, to cover 
his mouth with his hand, and cry " unclean, 
unclean." The utmost care was taken to detect 
the presence of the disease, for its approach was 
insidious ; and washings and cleansings and exam- 
inations, minute and well-nigh innumerable, were 
required. If the Jew found that his nearest 
friend, his brother, his wife, his child, was a leper, 
he had to leave him to his lonely life of separation 
and death. The disease began its work very 
slowly, it might exist for months and hardly be 
known, a slight discoloration, a little scab, was all 
that was noticed, but, by and by, it spread with 
terrible rapidity, and resulted at last in the com- 
plete corruption and dropping away of a hand 
or foot or arm, until at last death came to' the 
slow relief of the sufferer. 



150 DAKGEK, SIGNALS. 

Do you wonder that the Jews feared the leper ? 
Do you wonder that strict laws prevented the 
spread of the contagion ? Leprosy, the physical 
disease in its most dreaded forms, has been about 
stamped out of the modern world, but there is a 
moral leprosy which is more loathsome and more 
deadly, which walks our streets and enters our 
homes, alas ! which creeps into our hearts. In- 
stead of being afraid of it, we laugh at it, we treat 
it as a joke, we invite the leper to our firesides. 
He is found everywhere. He dwells in the brown- 
stone mansion, and in the filthy cellar. He 
sleeps on a bed of down sometimes, and sometimes 
on a heap of rags. He walks our streets, he rides 
in our horse-cars. He goes to school with our 
boys and girls, and his contact is as contagious 
and deadly as the leper of Judea. It is not at 
hap-hazard that I call this evil spirit of impurity 
a leper. If I were able I should not dare to lift 
the veil which hides this leper from the gaze of 
men. If some omniscient being should go up and 
down these streets, sprinkling with blood the doors 
where this leper had entered, what thresholds 
would be bloodless here ? 



THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH. 151 

I have received concerning this evil of sensual- 
ity many warnings from your friends, the business 
men, young people, which I am glad to give you 
right here. 

One of them writes : " If you ask what I think 
is the most dangerous or seductive influence, in 
city life especially, I should say licentiousness." 

Another one rehearses the story, only one 
among ten thousand it is sad to think, of a young 
man with bright hopes who was first led away by 
the lustful attractions of promiscuous balls, until 
he fell to the depths of infamy, and adds : " The 
superintendent of one of our large railways in 
Massachusetts told me that for no one cause did 
he so quickly discharge an employe as for being 
seen with disreputable women ; for, looking at it 
from the business, railroad-man's standpoint, 
merely, such connection surely leads to extrava- 
gance and defalcation." 

Another, who is always on the lookout for some 
chance to help the boys and girls of Boston, writes : 
" You put 4 rum ' first in your list of 6 enemies,' 
and I have always done so in my thinking. But 
I fear there is another evil, which lurks more in 



152 DANGER SIGNALS. 

the dark, and which is working nearly as much 
destruction. I refer to licentiousness. I believe 
it is on the increase. Our young men and women 
are not warned as they should be, it is such a deli- 
cate matter to speak about. 9 ' 

Another writes these strong words : " I should 
say that the most dangerous and seductive of all 
evils is licentiousness, the damning sin, the first 
poison of the race, starting in the garden, and, 
with crushing force, descending from generation 
to generation, until, today, its effect is felt in 
every home. It is sending more young men to 
ruin than all other influences combined. It is not 
so open as intemperance and there is its danger, 
but if you look for it you will see its marks in the 
pale cheek and wan features of our boys and girls 
in our homes. Its very secrecy is its danger. Its 
victims are filling premature graves, or, what is 
worse, our houses for the insane. I believe I am 
justified in saying that thousands of new-made 
graves are dug yearly to take in the young vic- 
tims of this cursed vice whose cause of death is 
unsuspected. Oh, for some power to show to the 
young the deadly poison of this growing vice ! " 



THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH. 153 

Says another of your friends, speaking of this 
same evil : " This vice not only ruins the natural 
body, but impairs the spiritual also. We can 
form no conception of its extent for it is known 
only to the victim and Him who knows all things. 
I speak very strongly on this point, for an inci- 
dent comes to my mind of a young man of Boston 
who took his life by shooting himself some thirty 
years ago. He was supposed to be of unblemished 
character, and probably his relatives and friends 
knew nothing to the contrary, but I was on the 
jury of inquest and a letter was found on his 
person saying that one of two things was before 
him — insanity or suicide, therefore he chose the 
latter, as the vice he had contracted was too 
strong for him to conquer. No one can tell what 
he must have passed through before he committed 
the deed. The contents of that letter have never 
been effaced from my memory." I can say 
"amen" with all my heart to this friend's closing 
words : "Would that every young person, addicted 
to this evil, could be warned of the results of such 
debasing vice." 

T will quote from only one more of the scores of 
7* 



154 DANGER SIGNALS. 

letters which refer to this leper of impurity. Says 
this gentleman: "My observation leads me to 
fear chiefly the impure literature of the day and 
the impure companion, who teach the practices 
that sap the young life at its first springing. I 
tell my boys, ' If you will promise your father and 
see to it that your mouth and hand are kept pure 
until you are twenty-one, I will promise you 
health, happiness, and usefulness, and all the good 
things you will then care to ask for.' ' .Here are 
some good rules which he adds : " Let the boy 
read no book and look at no picture he would not 
show his mother or sister. Let him drink nothing 
which he would not ask his mother to sweeten. 
Instead of the low theater, the skating rink, and 
ball-room, let him organize a home orchestra, in 
which sister shall play the piano, brother the 
volin, and himself the flute, while baby disarranges 
the music for them all. In this way is safetjr." 

But I hardly need to multiply these warnings 
for you are all aware that such a leper as I have de- 
scribed is abroad in the land. I need not make that 
point any plainer. Alas ! he is too well known to 
some of you. But if I can but tell you of some of 



THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH. 155 

the doors by which he will enter your hearts, and 
thus put you on your guard, I should be doing 
you a real service. If any one could have warned 
the Jewish youth of old of the leper in the way, 
giving him some infallible rule by which he might 
tell of his approach, that secret would have 
been of value incalculable to him. If one could 
have said to him, "Look out! there, there, through 
that door, by that alley-way, you will come in 
contact with the leper," how he would have 
blocked up and guarded that door or pathway, 
lest there he should contract the terrible contagion. 
If I can tell you of the three doors by which this 
leper, Impurity, will be most likely to enter your 
heart, will you not block them up against his 
entrance and forever guard them well? These 
three doors are Imagination-door, Eye-door, and 
Ear-door. Guard these three entrances to your 
soul, and the enemy can never take its citadel. 

Of all these doors, I think Imagination-door 
most often admits the Leper of Impurity. No 
one on earth sees this leper when he knocks at 
the door of the imagination, no one on earth 
notices when it is opened, a crack at first and then 



156 DANGER SIGNALS. 

flung wide open to the "unclean guest, but the 
devils in hell exult, for they know that he who 
opens the door of his heart to such a guest is fast 
on the way to join their ranks. Let us give heed, 
just here, to the words of Dr. J. G. Holland, they 
are so true and appropriate to this subject. 

" Oh, if this imaginary world of sin could be 
unveiled," he says, "this world into which the 
multitude go unknown and unsuspected, how 
would it be red with the blush of shame ! This 
world of sense, built by the imagination, how fair 
and foul it is ! Like a fairy island in the sea of 
life it smiles in sunlight and sleeps in green, 
known of the world, not by communion of knowl- 
edge but by personal, secret discovery! The 
waves of every ocean kiss its feet. The airs of 
every clime play among its trees and tire with the 
voluptuous music which they bear. Flowers bend 
idly to the fall of fountains, and beautiful forms 
are wreathing their white arms and calling for 
companionship. Out toward this charmed island 
by day and by night a million shallops push, un- 
seen of each other and of the world of real life 
they leave behind. The single sailors never meet 



THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH. 157 

each other, they thread the same paths unknown 
to each other; they come back and no one asks 
them where they have been. If God's light could 
shine upon this crowded sea and discover the 
secrets of the island which it invests, what shame- 
ful retreats and encounters should we witness. 
Fathers, mothers, maidens, men, — children even, 
whom we have deemed as pure as snow, — flying 
with guilty eyes and white lips to hide themselves 
from a great disgrace. There is vice enough in 
the world of actual life and it is there that we 
look for it ; but there is more in that other world 
of imagination which we do not see, — vice that 
poisons, vice that kills, vice that makes whited 
sepulchers of temples that are deemed pure, even 
by multitudes of their tenants." 

Beware of Imagination-door which this leper 
so often uses to make his entrance into your soul. 
Lock up Eye-door and Ear-door also. I have tried 
to put you on your guard in other chapters against 
bad papers, pictures, books, and evil companions, 
with their dirty story and smutty joke, but, boys 
and girls, you must lock these doors from the 
inside. When the burglar comes to your house by 



158 DANGER SIGNALS. 

night, it makes very little difference how many 
bars and bolts there are on the outside ; if there 
is no bolt on the inside, he can withdraw them 
all and walk in at his pleasure and rob the 
house. All that one can do by words of warning, 
all that your parents and teachers can do by their 
loving advice, is to lock the door from the outside ; 
it remains for you to turn the key and drop the 
bolt of a firm, resolute, pure purpose, which shall 
keep out all these demons from the pit. I often 
think, almost with a shudder, of the boy who goes 
out from his father's house into the impurity of 
the street and the school. He has been most care- 
fully reared, every evil thing has been kept beyond 
his reach, he has been loved and guarded and 
prayed for, but yet one half hour with the bad 
companion, one glance at the lewd picture, and the 
careful training of years is forgotten, and the 
leper, entering through Eye-door or Ear-door, has 
taken up his abode in that pure young soul and is 
only too ready to open the door over and over 
again to his loathsome companions, until, at last, 
little is left but corruption and death in that 
heart which left the father's house white and 
unsullied. 



THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH. 159 

Young friends, God has put yonr manhood, wo- 
manhood, and purity, in your own keeping. You 
can barter them away for smut, you can soil them 
with an indelible stain if you will, or you can pre- 
serve them unsullied, as your best heritage and chief 
glory. Your friends cannot preserve them for you, 
they can only give advice ; your pastor can only 
warn you. You, yourself, must lock the door, if 
you would keep your enemies out. Upon you 
alone will it depend whether you rise to the 
company of angels or sink to the level of the 
devils. I wish that I might say an earnest word, 
right here, to the girls and young women who shall 
read this chapter. This subject concerns you 
more vitally, perhaps, than any one class. 

If you had one jewel among your possessions 
that was worth a thousand times more than all the 
rest of your treasures put together, would you be 
careless of that jewel? Would you leave it lying 
about in a public place for every chance passer- 
by to pick up and make off with if he chose? 
Would you see how near you could come to drop- 
ping it into some dark cess-pool without actually 
letting it fall? Would you carelessly throw it 



160 DANGER SIGNALS. 

away from you some dark night, on the chance 
that you could find it again in the morning? You 
have such a jewel, a treasure that is worth to you 
a thousand Kohinoors, and yet I see some of you 
trifling with it, as though it was a worthless pebble, 
which you might retain or throw away at your 
pleasure. Your personal purity, unsullied, immac- 
ulate, unsuspected, — that is your jewel. You are 
playing with it, holding it very near the edge of the 
moral cess-pool, throwing it away, perhaps, for a 
little, thinking you can pick it up at your pleasure. 
Oh ! let me tell you how priceless is your treasure, 
let me warn you of the awful risk you run. 

The snow once sullied can never be whitened, 
the lily once crushed and withered can never be 
restored to what it was, the maiden soul once 
befouled can never regain its freshness of purity. 
To my sorrow and shame I see some young girls 
whose only thought seems to be of the young men. 
On the street, in the horse-cars, in the Sunday- 
school, in the prayer-meeting, they are never happy 
unless they are whispering and making eyes at 
some young man. They are the laughing-stock of 
the thoughtless, and they make the judicious 



THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH. 161 

grieve, and yet they never seem to suspect their 
folly or see themselves as others see them. Every 
social gathering, every meeting of prayer, every 
promenade on the street, every visit to the public 
library, is only an excuse for continued flirtation ; 
the mind becomes unstrung and is filled with light 
and trifling fancies, the imagination is perverted, 
and the will is weakened for any useful effort. 
Books lose their relish, housework becomes an 
unbearable drudgery, and the image of that young 
man is seen on the page of every book, sewn into 
the garment with every uneven stitch, and is 
worked into every slovenly piece of housework 
which the giddy girl is obliged to do. I am not 
speaking now of true love, for which this frivolous 
passion which borders on the indelicate is often 
mistaken. There is as much difference between 
true lovers and mere flirts, as there is between the 
quiet, steady, cheerful fire on the family hearth- 
stone, and the changeable, deceptive flicker which 
glows on the rotten stump in the woods at night. 
True love is holy and is one of the handmaidens 
of God. The mere flirt, male or female, is the 
servant of Satan. If you could know, young 



162 DANGER SIGNALS. 

ladies, what these same young men, whom you 
believe are so devoted to you, really think of the 
forward, bold, young woman, your cheeks would 
glow with shame whenever your eyes met theirs. 
They are bright enough to understand that the 
apple that drops too easily into their hand most 
likely has a rotten spot at the heart. If you could 
hear their jokes and innuendoes, and flings at your 
womanhood; if you could hear them talk about 
their " rock maidens," and their " piazza beauties," 
and their " buggy girls," you would never run the 
risk again of being called by those names, — that 
is if you have a spark of womanhood left, as I 
believe you all have. 

But do you say, " I mean nothing bad. I am 
only bound to have a good time, to enjoy myself! 
I shall look out to stop in season, before I am 
ruined" ? Perhaps you will, and oh ! perhaps you 
may not stop before you are ruined and driven an 
outcast from home and friends. But it is not on 
this low plain of possible final escape from the 
worst consequences that I would put this subject. 
Your treasure is too precious to be trifled with. 
Your jewel is too priceless to be risked. It is not 



THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH. 163 

best to set fire to your house, because it may be 
put out before the house is burned to the ground. 
It is not wise to fall into deep water because you 
may be dragged out before life is quite extinct. 
Let me say again, your treasure is too precious 
to be trifled with. Your jewel is too priceless 
to be risked. It is because personal purity is 
your jewel that I thus plead with you to run no 
risk. He who leaves open a safe filled with rub- 
bish is not particularly to be blamed. He who 
leaves open the safe that contains a million dollars 
in securities, is guilty of carelessness which is 
almost as criminal as dishonesty. 

Let me tell you this, too, young ladies, you are 
not only injuring yourselves, you are bringing 
reproach upon all womanhood when you thus 
cheapen and trifle with the charms of a pure 
maidenhood. For nineteen centuries past, Chris- 
tianity has had it for her task to raise womanhood 
out of the gutter of sensuality and bestiality 
where it so long lay helpless. Patiently, quietly, 
faithfully, has Christianity wrought, and right well 
has she succeeded, until woman sits upon the 
throne, with the sparkling crown of purity encir- 



164 DANGER SIGNALS. 

cling her brow. Will you do your little best to 
pull her from that proud position, and snatch away 
her crown? 

Every one who has ever known the influence of 
a pure, gentle, loving woman, be she mother or 
wife or sister or friend, can sing with Tennyson in 
the Princess : 

" Happy lie 
With such a mother! faith in womankind 
Beats with his blood, and trust in all things high 
Comes easy to him, and tho' he trips and falls, 
He shall not blind his soul with clay." 

Will any of you help to destroy this faith in 
womankind ? Will you not rather show us what 
Wordsworth calls, 

" A perfect woman, nobly planned, 
To warn, to comfort and command." 

" Show us how divine a thing 
A woman may be made." 

But I can hear some of you say, Are you not 
going to give us your opinion on balls, dances, 
skating-rinks, and such amusements ? I have not 
been ready to do so before but I think the way is 



THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH. 165 

open now. I have no quarrel with the ball-room 
in itself. I do not know that it is any more sinful 
in itself to skip lightly about to the sound of 
music, than to walk gravely and sedately, without 
any music to hurry the feet. I have no prejudice 
against roller skating in itself considered, but I 
have an undying and unconquerable prejudice to 
anything and. everything which will endanger the 
purity of young manhood and womanhood. I 
have an undying hatred of any place or any 
amusement which tends to soil the white lily of 
maidenly modesty, and this, from all that I know, 
promiscuous dancing and promiscuous skating in 
the public rink does tend to accomplish. 

The men to whom I have written send many 
warnings against the ball-room and the skating- 
rink, and send many sad stories of ruined lives, 
which received their first impetus on the down 
hill road in such places. I have not time to quote 
these wise words, but, as in a previous chapter the 
testimony of an ex-professiorial gambler against 
gambling was brought forward, let me here quote 
the testimony of a dancing-master against the 
waltz. 



166 DANGER SIGNALS. 

Mr. James P. Welsh, who, for ten years, was a 
dancing-master, has said in public print : " I have 
no hesitation in saying that I attribute much of 
the vice and immorality now prevailing to the 
insidious influence of the waltz. I tell you that 
in the high circles, young ladies at parties and 
balls are absolutely hugged, — ' embraced' would 
be too weak to express my meaning, — by men 
who were altogether unknown to them before the 
music for the waltz began to inspire the toes of 
the dancers. Is this a pleasant sight to contem- 
plate? " Mrs. General Sherman, who has written a 
book against waltzing, takes the ground that it is 
immodest, that it detracts from the purity of the 
young ladies engaged in it, and that it is demoral- 
izing in the extreme. I venture to say that if it 
were not for what this dancing-master calls " the 
hugging," the ball-room would lose its chief 
attraction. Is it worth while to risk the purity of 
manhood or womanhood, for a little temporary 
excitement on the waxed floor of the ball-room ? 
It is not as though there were no other pleasures 
accessible to the young than those found in the 
ball-room and the skating-rink. The purest joys 



THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH. 167 

are those that we experience when we get nearest 
to nature. Find your amusements out doors, boys 
and girls, and not in the close and dusty halls of 
pleasure. Use every holiday for a trip into the 
country, if you can. See how many things God 
has provided to make you glad, and do not get 
the idea that the only possible amusements are in 
these stuffy halls and rinks. 

There is a thousand times more music in the 
song of the birds, and the ripple of the brooks, 
than there is in the fiddle of the ball-room. There 
is vastly more health, wealth, and wisdom, for the 
genuine soul, with the blue sky for the curtain 
and the light and shade on forest and river 
for shifting scenery, than there is in the frescoed 
theater with painted trees and rivers and skies for 
scenery. I would rather walk ten miles into the 
country for a couple of hours in the silent woods, 
than go across the street to see a score of people 
skip up and down a slippery floor. I should like 
to have all my boys, yes, and girls too, learn to 
fish, shoot, row, swim, play base-ball, and skate in 
winter, (I have no great opinion of skating in 
summer time,) so that they may grow strong and 



168 DANGER SIGNALS. 

brave and sound of heart and limb, but I have no 
desire to have them spend much time or money to 
learn the false graces and poor accomplishments 
of the dancing-master. Every season has its out- 
door sports and joys, even city boys can have 
their share of them. Learn to love them, and my 
word for it, a purer, nobler, stronger manhood 
and womanhood will be yours. 

Not only are individuals in danger but our 
nation is threatened with this leprosy. The awful 
evils of sensuality and impurity are shown on 
a large scale in the degeneracy and imbecility 
of the modern Turk. No race has suffered 
so much from licentiousness, says a writer in the 
Saturday Review, quoted by a recent American 
author : " That the conquerors of Constantinople 
were a hardy race of great physical strength 
there can be no doubt; that the great majority 
of modern Turks are of an effeminate type is 
equally certain ; very many of them are persons 
of fine appearance, but they are physically weak, 
without elasticity, giving the appearance of men 
who have lost their vitality. The same may 
be said, even more emphatically, of Turkish 



THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH. 169 

women ; they are small in stature, of a sickly 
complexion, easily fatigued by exertion, and 
become prematurely old. After the age of forty 
all feminine beauty is gone ; the eyes have become 
sunken, the cheeks hollow, and the face wrinkled. 
Another immediate result of the prevailing sensu- 
ality is the mental imbecility of multitudes of the 
Ottoman Turks; great numbers among them are 
intellectually stupid. Many even of the young 
men have the vacant look which borders close on 
the idiotic state. This is not owing so much to a 
lack of education as to a mental incapacity which 
often amounts to real imbecility." Such an account 
of a whole nation weakened and unnerved by sen- 
suality is terribly suggestive. The " unspeakable 
Turk " is an awful warning. In the " sick man of 
Europe " there is a lesson for the young men of 
America. 

Let me tell you of the leper's end. " His dis- 
ease began with little specks on the eye-lids, and 
on the palms of the hand," says one authority, 
" and gradually spread over different parts of the 
body, bleaching the hair white, wherever it 
showed itself, crusting the affected parts with 
8 



170 DANGER SIGNALS. 

shining scales and causing swellings and sores. 
From the skin it slowly ate its way through the 
tissues to the bones and joints and even to the 
marrow, rotting the whole body piecemeal. The 
lungs, the organs of speech and hearing, and the 
eyes, were attacked in turn, till, at last, consump- 
tion or dropsy brought welcome death." 

It almost seems while reading this awful ac- 
count of wasting disease, as though I were de- 
scribing the living death of the moral leper, the 
sensual man. His disease begins with a little 
spot, a little impure thought, a little dalliance in 
imagination with unholy things, but the end, oh, 
the dreadful end ! 

From the outside this moral disease, too, slowly 
eats its way through the tissues even to the mar- 
row of the soul, rotting away the whole moral 
nature, piecemeal. The affections, the will-power, 
all the organs of right-thinking and right-acting 
are attacked in turn, till at last the first death, the 
death of the bodjr, brought on by lust and passion, 
ushers in the second death, the death of the soul. 
We know not what lies beyond the death of the 
body, but we do know that there shall in no wise 



THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH. 171 

enter into the heavenly city " anything that defil- 
eth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination or 
maketh a lie," and we also know that " without 
are dogs and sorcerers and whoremongers and 
murderers and idolaters and whosoever loveth and 
maketh a lie." 



CHAPTER IX. 

SAPPEES AND MINERS OF CHARACTER: 
FRIVOLITY, SELFISHNESS, DISHONESTY. 

At Petersburg in 1864. The Enemies that Work 
Underground and in the Dark. Frivolity. The 
Wrong Names it Assumes. The Laughter of 
Fools. Portrait of the Frivolous Young Man 
and Woman. A Business Man's View. Selfish- 
ness. Cultivate the Generous Nature. The 
Moth Miller of Character. Thomas Canfield. 
Dishonesty. More Warnings from the Mer- 
chants. Honest George Washington and Honest 
Abraham Lincoln. A Last Whisper in the Ears 
of the Boys and Girls. 

About day-break on the thirtieth of July, 1864, 
a tremendous explosion was heard in the neigh- 
borhood of Petersburg, Virginia ; a huge fort was 
blown into the air, carrying with it its whole gar- 
rison — a South Carolina regiment, and, where a 
moment before the fort had been in all its grim 
defiance, was seen nothing but a great pit with 
ragged edges, two hundred feet long and thirty 
172 



THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH. 173 

feet deep. That awful piece of destruction was 
the work of the sappers and miners. That hole 
beneath the fort had been dug a little at a time ; 
one shovelful after another had been removed. 

For many days and nights before, Union troops 
had been at work digging away noiselessly but 
rapidly beneath that fort, the garrison above never 
suspecting what they were about. Eight thou- 
sand pounds of powder were placed in this hole 
and then all that was left to do was to apply the 
fuse, and fort and garrison and munitions of war 
were blown into the air. 

I think there are some enemies in your way 
that seek to undermine your character just as 
these sappers undermined the fort at Petersburg. 
In the preceding chapters I have endeavored to 
point out to the young people some of their ene- 
mies who were waiting at every corner to give 
them battle and capture them, body and soul, if 
possible. But most of these enemies of which I 
have spoken have been visible and open enemies. 
The rum-shop stares at you every time you go 
down street, and the bright light which shines 
from the window at night is like a warning bea- 



174 DANGER SIGNALS. 

con to tell you of the rocks and whirlpools which 
await every one who comes too near, The bad 
paper is flaunted in all our shop windows, while 
the bill of the low theater, on every dead wall, tells 
you, in letters six feet long, what to expect if you 
are so foolish as to enter that spider's trap. 

But here is another class of enemies who work 
underground and in the dark ; they never show 
their horns and hoofs, but before the poor, thought- 
less boy or girl knows it, the mine is dug, the train 
is laid, the character is honeycombed, and all the 
Arch-enemy has to do is to apply the spark of 
some terrible temptation, and another life is for- 
ever ruined and another home disgraced. We 
hear nothing but the explosion, but the silent 
preparations for the explosion may have been 
going on for years. We see the hopes and fond 
expectations of a generation flying into the air, 
like the debris of the ruined fort on that summer 
morning in 1864, but we do not see how, little by 
little, like rust spots eating away at the polished 
steel, the preparation for that destruction of hopes 
and joys and life plans has been going on. 

We are terribly shocked by the news of the 



THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH. 175 

defalcation when it gets into the paper. But the 
defalcation is nothing but the explosion. The boy 
began to dig the mine for that explosion when he 
cheated in marbles and stole cookies from his 
mother's pantry. When the young woman is dis- 
graced and driven out of respectable society that 
is the explosion, but the girl began to dig the mine 
years ago, when she flirted with the boy in the 
Sunday-school class on the other side of the aisle, 
or allowed some little familiarity from a man who 
was neither father nor brother. There are many of 
these sappers and miners who are constantly at 
work trying to find the easiest way into the very 
citadel of your characters, boys and girls, but I 
can mention only three of them here. And 
these three shall be Frivolity, Selfishness, and Dis- 
honesty. If all the trouble they make you was the 
trouble they seem to work today that would be 
bad enough. No one likes a frivolous, thought- 
less, light-headed young person, a selfish girl or a 
boy whom he cannot trust. If that was all these 
enemies of yours did, rendering you disagreeable 
and unpleasant to others for the time being, it 
would be enough, but oh, think of the future ! 



176 DANGER SIGNALS. 

They are not only injuring you now, but the3 r are 
preparing the way for an awful explosion one of 
these clays, in which manhood and womanhood, 
home and friends, prospects and hopes, will all be 
involved. Let us take a look at these under- 
ground enemies of yours one by one ; if possible 
unearth them and discover what they are about. 

First, Frivolity. I mention this sapper of char- 
acter first because he does far more harm than is 
generally supposed. He tries to borrow the 
clothes of some one else, and calls himself Gay- 
ety, Happiness, Light-heartedness. But these are 
not his true names. Gayety is a very different 
personage, Pleasure and Frivolity do not long 
keep company, and Frivolity instead of being 
light-hearted often carries a very heavy heart. In 
telling you to beware of Frivolity I would not 
take away a single real enjoyment out of your 
lives. God has put you in a beautiful world and 
He meant to have you enjoy it. Every green shoot 
that thrusts its head above the soil, every bright- 
hued flower, every sweet-voiced bird, tells us how 
many things God has provided to make us glad. 
When you feel the life coursing through your 



THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH. 177 

veins so that you cannot help running and shout- 
ing and laughing, why run and shout and laugh, 
if it is the proper time and place. I like to see 
girls play with their dolls and their hoops, and 
boys fly their kites and kick foot-ball and jump 
leap-frog, and have right merry times. This is not 
what I mean by Frivolity, the sapper and miner 
of character. There is always a taint of evil 
about the fun he brings. There is usually some- 
thing low and smutty and tainted about his so- 
called pleasure. There is often a smile on his face 
and a laugh in his voice, to be sure, but it is hol- 
low, insincere sort of merriment. 

" The laughter of the fool," says Solomon, " is 
as the crackling of thorns under a pot." I think 
he had the grin and the hollow laugh of the frivo- 
lous man in mind when he wrote that verse. We 
all know young men whose lives are all honey- 
combed with this evil. No one puts any confidence 
in them. If one had an important place to fill he 
would not think of looking to them to fill it, simply 
because their lives give the impression of being so 
frivolous. Let me say to you all, very seriously, 
life is not a huge joke, by any means. It is not all 
8* 



178 DANGER SIGNALS. 

one long holiday. There are some holidays in it, 
and many days of quiet, health-giving recreation, 
but life is no joke. Life means hard, serious work 
of hand or brain. It means ten hours a day over 
the ledger, or ten hours a day at the forge, or at 
the carpenter's bench, or it means five hours in 
the school-room and two or three more of hard 
study at home, or it means drudgery in the kitchen 
or over the wash-tub ; and, if you make up your 
mind, as the frivolous person seems to do, that life 
is a sort of huge Barnum's circus, where you must 
play the part of clown, and wear the cap and bells, 
you will find out before long that you are dread- 
fully mistaken, and that you are being left away 
behind in the race. 

I think I can draw the picture of the frivolous 
young person. If it is a young man, he never 
sticks long to any one thing. He gets tired of 
this and that and the other because there is too 
much work about it. He is always looking for the 
easy place, with little work and large pay. That 
is the fool's paradise. He gets half an education, 
but studying is hard work and he soon leaves 
school for business. He secures a good place 



THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH. 179 

before he is well known, but very soon loses it 
because it is found that he cares more for his own 
amusement than his employer's interests. He is 
very often seen in the ranks of the sidewalk bri- 
gade, who have such a laborious time holding up 
the lamp-post on the street corner of a summer ev- 
ening. If he ever goes to church he is apt to come 
in on Sunday evening about fifteen minutes before 
the service is through, for the sake of ogling the 
girls or going home with them afterward. But he 
is more likely to stay outside, for the purpose of 
puffing cheap cigar smoke into the faces of the 
people when they come out, or of making ungal- 
lant remarks about the young ladies of the audi- 
ence. If he happens to be rich he is very likely 
to be a dandy and to carry his arms bent out, 
while he sucks an ivory-headed cane, and apes the 
English fool. 

If the frivolous young person is of the other 
sex, she puts all sorts of tawdry finery upon her 
back, where it will make the most show possible, 
like the merchant who puts all his best goods in 
the show case, and has no stock in trade behind. 
She is always on the lookout for the frivolous 



180 DANGER SIGNALS. 

young man. She understands all about handker- 
chief and glove flirtation, and is an adept in all 
those arts which lie on the debatable border-land 
between innocence and virtue. As was said before, 
the sappers and miners in warfare dig underground 
for the sake of undermining something at a dis- 
tance. They start their tunnel a thousand yards 
away, perhaps, from the fort they wish to blow up. 
So this sapper, Frivolity, begins with something 
which seems very innocent, but ends with some- 
thing very different, for the end thereof is death. 

To show you that I am not alone in my esti- 
mate of this enemy of yours let me give you the 
message which one of the gentlemen to whom I 
wrote in your behalf has sent you : " Perhaps one 
of the most common, and, in its beginning, seem- 
ingly the most innocent enemy of youth, is frivol- 
ity. By this I don't mean cheerfulness, vivacity, 
the love of a good story or a good joke. I pity 
the young person who is habitually gloomy and 
fails to enjoy innocent amusement, but I refer to 
the habit, so common among many, of thinking 
and speaking lightly on serious subjects. Once 
commence the habit of thinking or speaking 



THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH. 181 

lightly of temperance, virtue, duty to others, 
reverence for God, and the course is entered upon 
that leads to acts corresponding with the thoughts 
and words." 

Let us think for a moment of some of the sins 
to which habitual frivolity is almost sure to lead. 
I never saw the boy, who, the first time he ever 
tried to swear, uttered a loud-sounding oath. It 
was a little, timid, half-and-half sort of an oath 
that he began with, and back of that was some 
trifling jest about serious things. He begins with 
some poor witticism about religious matters, but 
he ends with the shocking oath which is uttered 
almost unconsciously, and by that time the charac- 
ter is pretty well honeycombed with irreverence 
and profanity. 

Or take the sin of Sabbath breaking for in- 
stance. Very few boys go sailing or horse rac- 
ing or to a base-ball match at first on Sunday. 
They begin by thinking lightly of God's day, by 
giving up habits of church-going on every frivo- 
lous pretext, by trying to make themselves believe 
that the fourth commandment has very little to 
do with them, but this frivolous view of the 



182 DANGER SIGNALS. 

Sabbath and God's house does not end here. 
" Young men are not aware," writes one of your 
friends, "how much a steady observance of the 
Sabbath and attendance on public worship estab- 
lish their character and prospects of success in 
this life, to say nothing of their eternal hopes." I 
know a case where a father with his son applied 
to the president of a bank for a vacant position 
for that son. The president was not a Christian 
but a shrewd, business man of the world. After 
inquiring about the young man's education and 
acquirements, he said to the father: "One thing 
more, is he in the habit of attending church 
regularly? I do not care where he attends, but 
we cannot employ any one who is not regularly an 
attendant on church. Any young man who is 
known to be an habitual Sabbath-breaker stands 
a sorry chance to obtain a good position or to 
retain it after his habits are known." 

I might give you a score of such warnings from 
the business men of Boston, but I feel that I am not 
going to the root of things until I begin further 
back and warn you, not only of profanity and 
Sabbath-breaking, but of that habit of mind from 



THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH. 183 

which they spring, of that light and frivolous way 
of living which regards life as nothing but a show 
or holiday, out of which you must get only the 
greatest possible amount of fun. When you have 
become habitually profane or habitual Sabbath- 
breakers, the tunnel has been dug, the fortress has 
been undermined, and the explosion only awaits 
the spark of temptation. But if I can lead you 
to know that 

" Life is real, life is earnest" ; 
if I can lead you to realize that muscle and brain 
and heart and a steadfast purpose and a soul given 
to God are the winning factors in life's battle ; if 
I could show you that a laugh at serious things 
and a sneer at religion, and dalliance with tempta- 
tion, tell of a shallow brain as well as a tainted 
heart, I would be doing you a service for which I 
should thank God as long as I live. 

Another of the sappers and miners of which I 
would warn you is Selfishness. One gentleman 
well known in business circles, writes these wise 
words on the subject : 

"Perhaps Selfishness must rank among the 
greatest enemies of youth. The desire to get and 



184 



DANGER SIGNALS. 



not give is one of our constant foes. One of the 
most important results of the church system of 
weekly offerings for charitable purposes is the 
early training of children to habitual, systematic, 
and intelligent giving. A gentleman who was 
solicited to contribute to a worthy object gave 
promptly but rather sparingly. When afterward 
shown the need of a larger contribution he pleas- 
antly responded with the desired addition, accom- 
panied with the remark, 4 1 was never in a condi- 
tion to give much until lately, and I find that one 
requires education in giving as much as in every- 
thing else.' I have often been called upon to 
raise money for benevolent objects," continues this 
gentleman, " and it has been painfully interesting 
to observe the disposition of the majority of peo- 
ple either to avoid giving, or to give as little 
as decency or conscience will allow. My life's 
observation leads me to the conviction that no 
man succeeds so well in life as he who tries to 
love his neighbor as himself." 

I have noticed that this sapper, Selfishness, 
begins way back in babyhood to undermine the 
character. When the little girl begins to play 



THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH. 185 

with her dolls he tells her to keep the best doll 
for herself and give her playmate the homely rag- 
baby ; when the little boy begins to build his first 
block house he tells him to use the best blocks 
and give his companions the poorest. Before the 
baby has discarded her pinafores this evil spirit is 
always whispering to her to look out for number 
one ; to take the biggest lump of sugar and nicest 
piece of cake and the handsomest plaything and 
every time she does this she is allowing her great 
enemy to dig the trench under the citadel of her 
life, called character, a little longer and deeper. 

Perhaps some little boys and girls may read this 
chapter. In order to make this matter very plain 
even to them, let me change the figure. Some- 
times, when I am calling on your fathers and moth- 
ers, I see a harmless-looking little insect, with 
white wings, flying about the room. Nothing 
could look more innocent and unoffending than 
that little white-winged miller. But I notice that 
all the family are very anxious to kill it. Your 
mother tries to capture it, and if she fails then 
your father claps his hands at it, and then uncle 
John takes his turn, and then you try for it your- 



186 DANGER SIGNALS. 

self, until, perhaps, every one in the room has 
taken his turn. If that little, fluttering moth 
was a mad clog you could n't seem much more 
anxious to put it out of the way, for you know 
that, though it looks so harmless, yet, if it gets 
into the carpets and woolen clothes, it will riddle 
them all through with tiny holes, and spoil them 
for next winter's use. Now this sin of selfishness 
of which I am warning you is very much like 
those moth millers. It is flying around in all our 
homes. It lights here and there and everywhere, 
sometimes upon the father and mother, sometimes 
upon the older brother and sister, sometimes even 
upon the baby's cradle. It makes no noise. It 
flits about as silently as the moth-miller and 
often looks just as innocent, but it does a thousand 
times more harm. It would be better for you to 
find all your winter clothes in the fall full of moth- 
holes than to find your characters when you grow 
up, full of the holes of selfishness. 

Whenever you see one of these sins fluttering 
about your hearts kill it, kill it, give it no quarter. 
After all though there are so many selfish people 
in the world and the air is so thick with these 



THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH. 187 

miserable moths, it is the generous, unselfish peo- 
ple whom the world honors. We never think of 
honoring selfish Emperor Nero or Caligula or.King 
Henry the Eighth, though they did occupy such 
high places in the world and though they have made 
so much history, but it is some humble, unknown 
man whom we delight to honor. It is that pilot 
on Lake Erie, for instance, who stuck to the 
wheel of the burning steamer until the parched 
skin peeled off his arms, rather than tarn away 
from his post of duty, or it is Florence Nightin- 
gale who went into the fever-stricken hospitals of 
the Crimea to make the soldiers' lot a little easier, 
or Ida Lewis who, in the dark and stormy night, 
rowed out upon the wild billows to save the ship- 
wrecked sailors. These are the ones whom we 
love to think of and to honor. They were not 
great in intellect or wealth or position but they 
had unselfish hearts, they had not allowed the 
moths of self-indulgence to honeycomb their souls. 
We need not go so far away from home to find 
an heroic example of unselfishness. A few days 
ago a Boston boy of nineteen was going across the 
Broadway bridge, when he saw a younger boy fall 



188 DANGEB SIGNALS. 

out of a boat into the water. It was a startling 
leap of forty feet from the bridge to the water, 
but, without waiting a moment, he plunged in, 
and battled with the swift tide and caught the 
drowning boy, and at a terrible risk to his own 
life he saved him. How the moths of selfishness 
must have flitted before his eyes, when he made 
that leap as he thought of the risk he ran ! But 
I think he must have killed a great many others 
in his life-time, for he brushed them all aside and 
took the risk and saved the life. All honor, I say, 
to that Boston boy, Thomas Canfield. 

I shall mention only one more sapper of charac- 
ter. His name is Dishonesty. Not glaring dis- 
honesty, at first, which would lead you to pick a 
man's pocket or take a dollar from your employ- 
er's till. This sapper never begins his work in 
this way. He ends it there often, but he begins 
with the little lie, the half truth that is often worse 
than a lie, the endeavor to keep up appearances 
when there is no substance behind the appearance. 
I cannot begin to give you all the warnings which 
have come to you on this score from your friends. 
But I will record one which I hope you will take 



THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH. 189 

to heart: "My observation of men has shown 
me that one of the most prolific roots of evil and 
one of the hardest to eradicate is the desire to 
get something for nothing. From this spring all 
forms of dishonesty and financial rascality, all 
cheating in trade, all gambling devices, and it 
enters largely into the composition of all shams. 
If we can bring a yonth to the point of refusing 
to receive anything of value without giving a fair 
equivalent much has been gained. I would teach 
a boy that by withholding his car fare when he is 
overlooked by the conductor he violates a contract 
which should be held all the more binding because 
unwritten, and the act injures him more than it 
does the railway company, because he thereby 
impairs his own integrity — the last thing he can 
afford to do." 

Our daily papers are sad commentaries on this 
terrible evil. Hardly ever do I take one up with- 
out seeing something about the last forgery or 
defalcation or embezzlement. It is not a solitary 
explosion here and there, at long intervals, but our 
ears are deafened and our hearts are made sick by 
the explosion of these mines, where character, 



190 DANGER SIGNALS. 

good name, fair fame, bright prospects, all, all are 
ruined. And yet, in every case, the sapper began 
his work years ago. The sly glance at the open 
book on examination day, the interlinear trans- 
lation, the attempt to make one dollar buy two 
dollars worth of goods, the effort to live on ten 
dollars a week and appear to have twenty, the 
false shame of honest poverty ; by all these 
methods the wiley sapper is slowly eating into the 
character, until the reckless speculation, the mis- 
appropriation of funds, the flight to Canada or 
the outlook from behind- prison bars reveals how 
rotten and hopeless is the character. There is no 
reproach resting upon the American name today 
that compares with the reproach of financial dis- 
honesty. Are we getting to be a nation of sharp- 
ers and swindlers ? Our defaulted state bonds, 
and repudiated debts, our Readjusters and Scalers 
in politics look like it. Is " American " to become 
a synonjan for sharp practice and financial crook- 
edness? Young men, you have something to do 
with the answer to that question. If you and 
those whom you represent are not on your guard 
the sappers and miners of dishonesty will not only 



THE ENEMIES OF YOUTH. 191 

blow up the fortress of individual integrity, but 
the fortress of national honor as well. There is 
a useful and honorable career for every boj^ in 
America of unstained, transparent honesty. I do 
not refer now to ordinary, commercial honesty, 
which will not steal any more than it can steal 
safely, which makes up its mind to be just honest 
enough to keep out of jail, as honest as the rest of 
the world, but to integrity of that high standard 
which makes a religion of honesty, the honesty 
which would not overcharge or deceive a customer 
any more than it would pick his pocket, which 
would not take the slightest advantage of another, 
even when it would never be found out, which 
could not be surprised into a lie or frightened into 
an untruth. The times are waiting for such young 
men, watching eagerly for their development, hold- 
ing out hands full of honors to them. 

Who are the two men, who, in all the one hun- 
dred and nine years of our national life, are the 
most honored and loved by the American people ? 
Honest George Washington and honest Abraham 
Lincoln. Some people say that Washington was 
a commonplace man in intellect and attainments, 



192 DANGER SIGNALS. 

that there have been many greater generals and 
statesmen, but no one says that there was ever a 
more honest man or a ruler of greater integrity. 
You have read, perhaps, the recent story of honest 
Abraham Lincoln ; how, when a rising young law- 
yer he was employed on a case which he became 
convinced was an unjust prosecution of an inno- 
cent man, he persuaded his client to relinquish it, 
and announced in open court his mistake and his 
abandonment of the case. That incident is only 
an index of his life. His honesty, perhaps, did 
not make him president, but his honesty has made 
his name revered by fifty millions of people, and 
will perpetuate it as long as America lives. 

Do you desire to be in good company? Un- 
known on earth though your name may be, do 
you wish to be ranked in God's sight with the 
good and pure and true ? Let me whisper in your 
ears, boys and girls, as I end my talks with you, 
you never will thus be ranked in heaven or on 
earth unless you shun these sappers and miners of 
character ; unless you kill these silently working 
character moths; unless you look out for "the 
little foxes which spoil the vines." 



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